Terra Cognita - by Chad Davidson (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Terra Cognita, poet and essayist Chad Davidson investigates the seemingly never-ending fascination that travelers have with Italy. Across nine essays, he probes the spaces that emerge between the travel we intended to take and what we ended up with, as well as how we base our lived experience on all the simulations and imitations around us. A place as overexposed as Italy can become a kind of palimpsest, an amalgam, a projection, ultimately, of what we already had in mind. For nearly thirty years now-more than half his life-Davidson has shuttled back and forth to Italy. Terra Cognita finds literary predecessors such as Dante and Italo Calvino crowding in as much as any travel-show host, Hollywood film star, or hopelessly romantic portrayal of Florence might. Though each essay departs from a particular location in Italy and remains rooted in the author's own history there, they ultimately become less about that place and more about the placeless-ness any such travel can engender. Whether visiting places overblown (Rome, Venice), lesser known (Spoleto, Postignano), or even island outposts (Sardegna, Pantelleria), Terra Cognita meditates on all the demands we place on travel writ large: to fix us, to right us, to console us and dampen our griefs, to entertain and edify us, to feed us what we want. No country or travel to it could meet all those demands. Davidson voices the failures and attractions of such an enterprise, how-even after flying across an ocean and landing in a foreign country-we are still hopelessly and fully ourselves"--

Book Synopsis

Twenty-seven years in the making, Terra Cognita chronicles the author's continual travels--and problematic (if still, at times, ecstatic) encounters--in the "bel paese." Across nine richly evocative essays, Chad Davidson investigates the seemingly never-ending fascination that travelers have with Italy.

As much a meditation on what home and away mean as it is a travel memoir, Terra Cognita finds literary predecessors such as Dante and Italo Calvino crowding in alongside more accustomed sights from travel shows, Hollywood films, and tourist guides. Though each essay departs from a particular location in Italy and remains rooted in the author's own history there, the book ultimately becomes less about those places and more about the placelessness any such journey can engender, how--even after flying across an ocean and landing in a foreign country--we are still hopelessly and fully ourselves.

Review Quotes

"Terra Cognita will inspire readers to want to travel to Italy, and, by all means, discover their own truths, as well as find the astute meaningfulness that Davidson has wrought."--Allen Gee, author of My Chinese-America

"Davidson's skillful prose, deeply invested with humor and pathos, will complicate what you know--and what you think you know--about Italy."--Dionne Irving, author of Quint and The Islands

"In Terra Cognita, Chad Davidson clears a space for deeper, richer, far more profound questions and insights about Italy by seeing into the very conditions that render our sight dull and conventional."--Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers and Rough Likeness

"It's impossible to imagine a better tour guide than Chad Davidson to show us the riches and ruins of Italy. In each of these bustling essays, Davidson veers through Italian cities and towns, brilliantly exploring not only each boots-on-the-ground place but also what lingers in the tourist's memory long after returning home."--Matt Donovan, author of A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption

About the Author

Chad Davidson is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Unearth. His essays have appeared in AGNI, the Antioch Review, Five Points, and the Gettysburg Review. He directs the School of the Arts at the University of West Georgia near Atlanta and codirects Convivio, a summer writing conference in Postignano, Italy.