El doble de la palabra. El mito de Eco en la literatura inglesa contemporánea

This article explores the figure of Echo in contemporary English literature focusing on works by A.S. Byatt, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Nicole Ward Jouve and Moniza Alvi among others. After an introduction on the secondary literature published on the nymph, Echo is analyzed under the perspective of opposites such as self/other, metropolis/colony, word/silence in poetry, theatre and short stories. Considered en masse, the works discussed in this article manifest how the reception of Echo is closely linked to the concept of the double in Western cultures.El objetivo de este artículo es el estudio de la figura de Eco en la literatura contemporánea escrita en lengua inglesa a partir de trabajos de A.S. Byatt, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Nicole Ward Jouve y Moniza Alvi entre otros. En poesía, teatro y relatos cortos, analizamos a Eco primero desde la literatura crítica publicada sobre la ninfa y posteriormente desde la perspectiva de oposiciones binarias uno/otro, metrópolis/colonia, palabra/silencio. Consideradas en conjunto, las obras revisadas en este artículo demuestran cómo la recepción del mito en la literatura contemporánea se encuentra estrechamente ligada a la evolución del concepto del doble en la cultura occidental

Escribiendo a Casandra: personajes dramáticos en la narrativa contemporánea

Christa Wolf’s Cassandra is the landmark for refigurations of the Cassandra myth in the contemporary novel. Yet close to its date of publication, Ursule Molinaro (1979), Christine Brooke-Rose (1984) and Hilary Bailey (1993) published their own novelistic reworkings of the Cassandra myth. The presence of the Cassandra myth in the British novel is in contrast with the fruitful reworkings of the Trojan princess in poetry and drama. From the nineteenth century onwards, refigurations of Cassandra in prose writings in English range from the feminist essay to the novel of customs and the fin-de-siècle New Women utopias. Works such as Florence Nightingale’s Cassandra, for example, show how the words of Priam’s daughter can be adapted to social vindications and develop into an obscure discourse which results in Broke-Rose’s postmodernist deconstruction. This chapter seeks to analyze Cassandra’s prophetic language in the three novels in contrast with other refigurations of the myth in English which reveal the cultural processes behind the construction of the narratives

New Woman and New Electras: Approaches to Classical Mythology in Victorian Burlesque Theatre.

This paper seeks to analyze Francis Talfourd’s Electra in a New Electric Light (1859) as related to the Victorian stereotype of the strong-minded woman. After a brief introduction on the links between nineteenth-century burlesque and the social history of women in Victorian times, I shall focus on the figure of Electra as epitome of late nineteenth-century representations of New Women. El objetivo de este trabajo es el estudio de Electra in a New Electric Light (1859) de Francis Talfourd a partir del estereotipo victoriano de la strong-minded woman. Para ello, tras comentar la relación existente entre el teatro burlesco decimonónico de tema clásico y la historia social de la mujer a lo largo del siglo, nos centraremos en la figura de Electra, y en cómo, acompañada de otras heroínas clásicas, anticipa la representación de la Nueva Mujer de finales de siglo

The Voice of Cassandra: Florence Nightingale's Cassandra (1852) and the Victorian Woman

In an undated letter to her sister Parthenope (c. 1844), Florence Nightingale wrote:"What is life? It cannot be merely a gaining of experience it is freedom, voluntary force, free-will, & therefore must be a hard fought battle in order to make a choice, there must be evil & good to choose from" (Vicinus & Nergaard 1990: 25). As a victim aware of the social constraints that Victorian women had to tackle in their development as independent citizens, Nightingale fought for further education, for a life outside marriage and for the establishment of midwifery as a respected profession. In such a gallant endeavour, the most passionate battle which she undertook was to acquire a voice which would enable her to make her own choices and be heard and considered both in the public and private spheres of her time

Mythic Women in Victorian England: Cassandra and Florence Nightingale

[Abstract] This paper seeks to examine the transmission of Cassandra in Victorian England as a prelude to subsequent reworkings that consider the myth the epitome of the silenced discourse of women. Florence Nightingale’s relation to the Cassandra myth both in her personal life and in her essay Cassandra (1852) configures the heroine as a model to the vindication of the rights of women. Modern constructions of the myth read it as an archetype of the appropriation of the patriarchal discourse by gender minorities

The Double of the Word. The Myth of Echo in Contemporary English Literature

This article explores the figure of Echo in contemporary English literature focusing on works by A.S. Byatt, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Nicole Ward Jouve and Moniza Alvi among others. After an introduction on the secondary literature published on the nymph, Echo is analyzed under the perspective of opposites such as self/other, metropolis/colony, word/silence in poetry, theatre and short stories. Considered en masse, the works discussed in this article manifest how the reception of Echo is closely linked to the concept of the double in Western cultures

«The Devil is in the house»: Theatrical depictions of strong-minded women in Victorian England (1850-1895).

Son abundantes los ejemplos de strong-minded women como personajes teatrales en la tradición victoriana desde la década de 1850. Este hecho coincide en el tiempo con un empleo específico del término para referirse, de forma peyorativa, a la mujer tipificada que desafía los valores tradicionales de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Los estudios de caso que presentamos en este artículo revelan cómo un análisis minucioso de la construcción cultural de la strong-minded woman en calidad de personaje teatral permite dibujar una cartografía de la historia artística de la «cuestión femenina» en la escena victoriana como espejo de los estereotipos sociales del momento. El artículo demuestra cómo el término <strong-minded woman se convierte en un topos recurrente de la escena en las décadas de 1850 a 1870 que amplía el número de personajes femeninos tipo en el teatro como precedente de la New Woman finisecular.Examples of strong-minded women on the Victorian stage abounded from the 1850s. This coincides in time with a specific use of the term which pejoratively refers to a typified woman who challenges traditional values in the second half of the nineteenth century. The cases of study that I present in this article reveal how a close examination of the strong-minded woman as a theatrical role allows theatre historians to map the aestheticized history of the Woman Question on the Victorian stage as a mirror of the social stereotypes of the time. As I shall contend, the theatrical strong-minded woman is a recurring topos which widens the scope of stock female characters available on stage between the 1850s and the 1870s as a precedent for the New Woman