Italy (Location Key)

Only two characters visit Italy in person. Rome, the country's capital, is one of the European locations from which Mrs. Harriss sends her friends in Yoknapatawpha cards during her travels in "Knight's Gambit." In Flags in the Dust Horace Benbow visits Venice before returning to Jefferson after World War I. The craftsmen of the Venetian island of Murano have been famous for the quality of their glassware since the end of the 13th century, and it is there that Horace discovers the art of glassblowing that (as a figure for a failed artist) he tries to practice when he's at home again. Italy is also known as a source for marble and marble sculpture, and that defines its role in three other texts. Despite the circumstances of the Civil War in Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen imports marble tombstones from Italy for himself and his wife. After Eula Snopes' death in The Town Gavin Stevens sends a photograph of her to Italy to acquire a marble medallion to fasten to her monument in the cemetery. And the "eight disjointed marble columns" that are assembled in Jefferson for the courthouse are imported from Italy (Requiem for a Nun, 36).