Welcome: Victorian Popular Fictions 5.1

Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

Rediscovering W. H. G. Kingston’s Arctic Narrative: Ethnocultural encounters and generic experimentation

This article examines a forgotten nineteenth-century boys’ adventure novel, Peter the Whaler (1851), written by William Henry Giles Kingston. After briefly introducing the author and his changing fortune, the article focuses on two specific aspects of Peter the Whaler, namely, its generic complexity and its thought-provoking representation of Inuit characters. A first aspect taken into account is the remarkable generic hybridity of Kingston’s novel, which sheds light on the complex narrative experimentation conducted by Victorian writers and, especially, on their development and commercialisation of popular forms, such as the juvenile adventure novel. Besides merging realism with romance, Kingston makes an interesting use of gothic paraphernalia, and he combines elements of adventure fiction with a religious discourse that marks the distinction of his whole oeuvre. Worthy of attention are also the novel’s pictures of Inuit people and culture. These pictures contrast with the racial assumptions endorsed by Victorian anthropologists and writers, including Charles Dickens, who famously disparaged Inuit testimonies in his 1854 articles to defend John Franklin and his men from allegations of cannibalism. The comparison between Kingston and Dickens offered in the article confirms the innovativeness of the ethnocultural encounters narrated in Peter the Whaler, suggesting further reasons why this novel deserves to be rediscovered and reinterpreted in our age

Sensational artists in Italy : mid-Victorian variations of the Kunstlerroman plot

Before the nineteenth century, the Grand Tour had been 'an indispensable form of education for young men in the higher ranks of society' -a traditional rite of passage for all those who wished to complete their Bildung. Upper- and middle-class Victorians still held this conviction. The Mediterranean, in particular, was a favourite destination for their journeys. Both the common traveller and the budding artist were encouraged to visit Southern lands, whose natural beauties and artistic heritage were expected to widen their cultural horizon. The most popular destination for artists was Italy. Cities like Rome, Florence and Naples offered precious opportunities to study Classical and Renaissance architecture, sculpture and painting. The close link between Italy and artistic initiation is suggested, among others, by Attilio Brilli, who mentions Giacomo Barri's Viaggio pittorico (1671) and its English equivalent, The Painter's Voyage to Italy by William Lodge (1679), as compulsory readings for the Grand Tourist.peer-reviewe

'This extraordinary apathy' : Wilkie Collins, Italy and the contradictions of the Risorgimento

As is well known, Italy was a cultural magnet for the Victorians. Its language, lore and society became objects of growing intellectual curiosity during the nineteenth century, while the political debates over the Risorgimento directly involved the English public. Traditionally conceived as a setting for Gothic fantasies and a main destination of the Grand Tour, Italy also came to be perceived as a source of political and ideological contention in the age of Victoria, when the ideas of radical thinkers and political exiles stirred both English sympathies and fears. The convergence of different meanings turned Italy into a fluid, semantically unstable trope. As Annemarie McAllister observes, 'the Italian' was specifically constructed as a ' multifaceted and multivalent cultural object'. This semantic complexity was due to the merging of two main concepts.peer-reviewe

Polar contagion. Ecogothic anxiety across media in the twenty-first century

Concerns about climate change have seen increased attention across virtually all media after 2000. In addition to raising ecological awareness, these concerns have inspired numerous gothic fictions, in which the polar thaw consequent on global warming becomes a source of paranoia, fear and horror. This article explores a specific group of twenty-first-century cultural products that associate polar melting with epidemics triggered by pathogens or infectious insects released after lying dormant in the ice. Often called “zombie” viruses or bacteria, these pathogens appear in a wide range of fictions as well as in sensational articles that use gothic paraphernalia to describe the spread of terrible diseases. Like spectres, these agents of contagion return from the past to haunt the present; they also cast a dark shadow upon the future, as they become the invisible protagonists of “dystopian ecological visions” in which humankind and other species are at risk of annihilation. Four types of products are analysed to demonstrate that they convey similar anxieties by combining images of environmental disaster with pandemics. Different though they are in genre and medium, novels like Thaw’s Hammer (2010), films like The Thaw (2009) and TV series like Fortitude (2015-18) not only interrogate the epistemological limits of science; they also shed light onto dangerous socioeconomic dynamics while posing ethical dilemmas about the human meddling with nature. Mostly produced before the spread of coronavirus, these fictions are made more appealing by the current pandemic, which has encouraged speculation over new potential sources of contagion. Their appeal is confirmed by the 2020 proliferation of newspaper/magazine articles focusing on “zombie” pathogens. By merging objectivity with sensationalism, these articles turn pathogens into spectral agents that seek revenge for human crimes against nature

Making Space : Key Popular Women Writers Then and Now

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

La letteratura dal punto di vista degli scrittori

La storia della critica letteraria è stata generalmente esaminata dal punto di vista degli studiosi di teoria. Manca, a tutt’oggi, una visione d’insieme che esamini in maniera sistematica la critica letteraria dal punto di vista interno, ovvero degli autori stessi. Muovendo da tali premesse, il volume propone un’articolata analisi dei «discorsi» sulla letteratura prodotti da scrittori di lingua inglese, dalla seconda metà del Cinquecento a oggi. Allo scopo di dare ordine a una materia ampia e frastagliata, sono state individuate tre principali tipologie discorsive, o forme testuali, attraverso cui gli autori hanno dato voce alle proprie idee sulla letteratura. A tali tipologie discorsive corrispondono le tre sezioni in cui è stata suddivisa la materia critica del volume. La prima sezione, «Saggi e paratesti», esamina le teorie letterarie esposte in forma di saggi, prefazioni, commenti da parte dell’autore. La seconda sezione, «Disseminazioni», analizza le idee sulla letteratura sparse all’interno di romanzi, drammi, poesie. La terza sezione, infine, «Maschere d’autore», si concentra sulle teorie letterarie la cui esposizione è affidata a un alter ego dello scrittore, ovvero a una maschera parzialmente autobiografica. Ne emerge un quadro ricco e composito all’interno del quale teoria e prassi letteraria si arricchiscono reciprocamente, fino a fondersi in una più complessa unità i cui confini appaiono labili, indefiniti, negoziabili

Itinerarium mentis in Deum: religiosita' e sovversione nella poesia di Christina Rossetti e Gerard Manley Hokins

Dottorato di ricerca in anglistica. 11. ciclo. Relatore Francesco MarroniConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7, Rome; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale - P.za Cavalleggeri, 1, Florence / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

Sherlock Holmes’s Precursors: Eccentrics, Amateur Sleuths and Oriental Mysteries in Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins is undeniably one of the initiators of the detective novel. The role he played in creating the new form was famously consecrated by T. S. Eliot, who defined The Moonstone (1868) as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels”. In later decades of the twentieth century, scholars have widely assessed the contribution Collins gave to the launch and development of the detective genre. As Robert Ashley declared in 1960, Collins “should have to his credit..

“I hate him. No, I don’t… I hate myself”: Wilkie Collins and the Anatomy of Hatred

À l’époque victorienne, une discussion constante des valeurs fut associée aux relations interpersonnelles. La rapidité des changements affectant la société créa de nouvelles attentes, de nouvelles expériences psychiques et de nouveaux modes de catégorisation de l’impact émotionnel que les échanges interpersonnels causaient sur la subjectivité. Wilkie Collins fait partie des écrivains qui, de façon répétée, dramatisa le conflit entre l’individu et la société normative. Dans ses œuvres de fiction, la haine non seulement informe la dynamique sociale interne de son époque, mais elle sert de révélateur à une curiosité portant sur des concepts psycho-ontologiques auxquels on accordera une importance toute particulière à la fin du XIXe siècle. Cet article, au travers de l’analyse des trajectoires passionnelles entre colère-haine-vengeance mises en fiction dans Basil (1852) et Armadale (1864-6), explore l’intérêt immuable que porte Collins aux sentiments antisociaux, ainsi que sa représentation complexe des expériences de désagrégation et d’exécration de soi-même qui allaient devenir des éléments centraux de la psychanalyse moderne