This study shows how, in the nineteenth century, Americans often described and narrated Italy as a way of reflecting on their own country and national identity in genres as various as travel literature, fiction, poetry, and journalism. Indeed, maintains author Leonardo Buonomo, Italy helped the Americans to relativize, if not redefine, the very idea of Americanness. The texts discussed here are James Fenimore Cooper's The Bravo (1831), Henry T. Tuckerman's...