SOURCE: "Théophile Gautier's Voyage en Italie: The Description of Experience, or the Experience of Description," in Words of Power: Essays in Honour of Alison Fairlie, edited by Dorothy Gabe Coleman and Gillian Jondorf, The University of Glasgow Publications in Language and Literature, 1987, pp. 139-61.

In the essay that follows, Driscoll discusses Gautier's detailed descriptions in his travelogue, Voyage en Italie, and attempts to distinguish between the two voices of the narrator—the journalist and the poet.

In its earliest version, Gautier's account of his travels in Italy appeared in instalments in La Presse, beginning in September 1850, while Gautier himself was still absent in Venice.¹ At first sight, the Voyage en Italie seems to represent a relatively simple literary enterprise: the author visits Italy and describes, for his readers at home in France, what he sees there.

It is evident, however, from the moment of Gautier's entry into...