The First Accounts of Cycling Trips in Italy (late 19th – early 20th Century) Immersion in Reality or Literary Escape?

This article analyses the accounts from early Italian cycling journeys published at the turn of the 20th century: Calabria e Basilicata (1897) and Sicilia (1898), by Vittorio Luigi Bertarelli, « Sul pedale » (1902), by Alfredo Oriani, and La lanterna di Diogene (1907), by Alfredo Panzini. It shows, on the one hand, how these writings share some common features, and, on the other hand, their diversity, due to their different aims and the different intellectual orientations of their authors.