William Beckford's Use of the Ancients in Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents

This article examines William Beckford’s engagement with classical antiquity in his Italian travel books, arguing that the Ancients serve less as authoritative models than as instruments of self-fashioning. Beckford’s selective references to classical authors, sites, and artworks are mediated through Enlightenment aesthetics and personal fantasy, producing an idiosyncratic vision of Italy that oscillates between erudition and imaginative projection. By situating his travel writing within late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British responses to classical Italy, the article highlights Beckford’s departure from both neoclassical reverence and Romantic authenticity, revealing a playful and strategic relationship with the classical past.