16 research outputs found
Mrs. Henry Wood
No full textMrs. Henry [Ellen] Wood [née Ellen Strand Price, 1814-87], was the author of "East Lynne" (1861) - the enormously successful and sensational mid-Victorian bestseller, and many others. "East Lynne" sold more than 1 million copies in her lifetime. She was such a prolific novelist who enjoyed literary success and fame during her life but she dwindled to a minor literary figure in the following century as a consequence of fin-de-siècle changing literary tastes. Yet, in recent years, Wood has become the object of renewed scholarly interest even if attention is still mostly paid to "East Lynne". This new book examines Wood's career and works. As Mariaconcetta Costantini now shows, what is needed is a wider exploration of her oeuvre as well as a reflection on some elusive aspects of her professional figure. Wood shunned publicity and led a quiet family life despite the important role she played in the Victorian print industry. Yet - in ways similar to her life - her oeuvre still challenges interpretation as it perplexingly combines sensationalism with domestic ideals. By reading Wood through the lens of feminist theory, this work sheds new light onto relevant aspects of her career and personality. The book is devoted to the complexities of her fiction. It ascertains the extent to which her generic experiments and characterization convey a subtle critique of gender roles intertwined with seemingly reassuring images of domesticity
Mariaconcetta Costantini, Mrs Henry Wood
No full textThis book (224 p. including bibliography and index) focuses on one of the lesser-known Victorian women writers, Ellen Wood, who chose “Mrs Henry Wood” for a pen name, so as to ensure an image of matronly respectability, even submissiveness. This author, associated with the sensation novel and popular writing, was a best-selling, yet controverted writer in her time. She was then forgotten for a long period and recently rediscovered by feminist critics in particular. Mariaconcetta Costantini, a..
Transcending Historical Violence: Uses of Myth and Fable in Ben Okri’s "Starbook”
No full textViolence is a leitmotif of contemporary African literature. In addition to reconstructing their past of colonization and slavery, African writers have increasingly denounced the brutality of postcolonial history, as shown by the multiple images of conflict (class, gender, generational, religious, ethnic) with which their narratives are interspersed. What differs, however, are the modes of representation of past and present traumas. While some writers have opted for realistic and historiographic approaches to these traumas, others have developed alternative strategies by reworking the legendary lore of two traditions (western and indigenous) and projecting chronicled patterns of violence onto the ahistoricized dimension of myth. The narratives resulting from such experimentation not only invite a reflection on the formal innovations introduced by their authors. They also point to different ways of conceptualizing, and being reconciled with, the cruelty inherent in old and recent African history, which acquires new meanings and appears more redeemable if viewed from a not purely deterministic perspective.
The article explores the specific ‘mythical method’ developed by Ben Okri who, in representing violence, revives a legacy of myths and fables to deconstruct “the lies and propaganda which have been used to oppress” human beings (A Way of Being Free, 58). As he explains in his essays, Okri attributes the horrors of human (and African) history to the false myths created by the powerful, and encourages a cross-cultural rethinking of the lore of forefathers as a strategy of resistance against the “manufactured realities” of the present (A Way of Being Free, 49). In his view, contemporary artists have a main responsibility: they must destroy today’s mythologies (see Barthes) and promote spiritual growth by reawakening the magic and mystery of the stories of antiquity.
Okri pursues this objective by reactivating the palingenetic power of original myths which gave shape to human experiences, both in Africa and in the Western world. Naturalistically crude in its details but transposed into an imaginative dimension, the violence of African history becomes, in his fiction, a catalyst for future regeneration which is achieved through two mythically codified rituals: initiation and sacrifice.
The article focuses on Starbook (2007), a stylistically hybrid novel which offers a fabulous reconstruction of the tragedy of slavery. By conflating realism with romance and fable, and by intertwining myths recurring in diverse cultures (the golden age, the fall, the pharmakos, the child-saviour, the magical work of art), Okri narrates the Black Atlantic diaspora from an ahistorical perspective which, without diminishing its elements of brutality and loss, encourages its reinterpretation as a temporary, albeit painful, episode in the continent’s age-long history. As the narrator announces in the conclusion, the events told in the novel are just fragments of a book of life which continues to be written and, as such, can still generate wonders: “All is not lost. Greater times are yet to be born” (Starbook, 421).
Unlike most postmodernists, who expose and desacralize the hegemonic discourses encoded within traditional fables, the author of Starbook embeds myth within the novel-form to give an epic quality to his narrative. If it is true that he denounces the false mythologies of our age, it is also true that he revives the potential creativity of ancient lore and, in so doing, creates a generically hybrid text which provides an alternative to the main traditions of slavery literature
Wilkie Collins e il mondo letterario vittoriano. Riflessioni, provocazioni, innovazioni.
No full textIl capitolo prende in esame il contributo che Wilkie Collins diede ai numerosi cambiamenti che avvennero nel mondo letterario inglese a partire dagli anni Cinquanta dell’Ottocento. Collins visse e compose le sue opere in un momento di rapida trasformazione delle forme letterarie e del mondo editoriale – una trasformazione legata all’affermarsi di una letteratura di massa e di un mercato editoriale rivolto a classi eterogenee, alla professionalizzazione del ruolo dello scrittore, a un’ibridizzazione dei generi che mise in discussione la ‘purezza’ del gusto estetico e di forme espressive tradizionali. In particolare, Collins svolse un ruolo significativo nello sviluppo di sottogeneri popolari del romanzo, come il sensation novel e il detective novel, non solo attraverso la sua scrittura creativa (in quanto iniziatore delle due tipologie sul suolo inglese) ma anche grazie a riflessioni teoriche compiute in alcune opere non finzionali.
Scopo del capitolo è analizzare due gruppi di scritti collinsiani in cui sono rintracciabili le idee innovative, e spesso provocatorie, che l’autore elaborò nel corso della sua carriera. Nello specifico, saranno esaminate le numerose prefazioni apposte ai suoi romanzi e alcuni saggi composti negli anni Cinquanta che inizialmente apparvero sulle riviste dickensiane per essere poi ripubblicati nel volume "My Miscellanies" (1863).
Le prefazioni, che a volte anticipano gli attacchi dei recensori, altre volte replicano alle varie accuse di ‘corruzione’ (estetica e morale) mosse a Collins, forniscono utili indicazioni sulle nuove idee che lo scrittore sviluppò in un periodo di circa quarant’anni, riflettendo sui rapporti con il suo pubblico, sulla ricerca di ‘realismo’ narrativo, sulla tendenza dei critici a confondere categorie estetiche e morali, sugli elementi sperimentali da lui introdotti a più livelli nella sua fiction. Si tratta di paratesti che vale la pena di esplorare in dettaglio in quanto, come suggerisce Norman Page, le prefazioni collinsiane “collectively constitute a most interesting body of documents than those of most pre-Jamesian novelists” (Norman Page, "Wilkie Collins. The Critical Heritage").
Altrettanto degni di attenzione sono alcuni saggi che, in tono spesso ironico e di sfida, dimostrano l’attenzione di Collins per questioni editoriali ed estetiche che cominciano ad emergere attorno alla metà del secolo. Se in “Dramatic Grub Street” (1858) l’autore investiga alcune cause socio-economiche del declino qualitativo del teatro inglese coevo, in “The Unknown Public” (1858) egli si interroga sul pubblico non-intellettuale dei penny-journal readers e sul possibile sviluppo di una letteratura ‘ibrida’ che soddisfi i gusti di classi diverse. Altri spunti di rilievo sono offerti in “Portrait of an Author” (1859), dedicato a Honoré de Balzac, in cui l’omaggio biografico è combinato con acute considerazioni sul realismo compositivo del grande scrittore francese. Ma è soprattutto in “A Petition to the Novel-Writers” (1856) che Collins dimostra la sua ricerca di formule e stilemi innovativi, usando l’understatement per ridicolizzare espressioni e strategie narrative codificate. Il desiderio del novum qui manifestato troverà attuazione, di lì a poco, nei romanzi sensazionali e nelle prime prove di detective fiction con cui l’autore si cimenta, le quali gli garantiranno il successo sulla scena letteraria vittoriana
Oxygen Stability in the New [FeFe]-Hydrogenase from <i>Clostridium beijerinckii</i> SM10 (CbA5H)
No full textThe
newly isolated Clostridium beijerinckii [FeFe]-hydrogenase
CbA5H was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy
coupled to enzymatic activity assays. This showed for the first time
that in this enzyme the oxygen-sensitive active state Hox can be simply and reversibly converted to the oxygen-stable inactive
Hinact state. This suggests that oxygen sensitivity is
not an intrinsic feature of the catalytic center of [FeFe]-hydrogenases
(H-cluster), opening new challenging perspectives on the oxygen sensitivity
mechanism as well as new possibilities for exploitation in industrial
applications
Clostridia from a pilot plant for enhanced hydrogen gas production: isolation, molecular characterization and hydrogenase genes cloning for exploitation in biotechnology
No full textIsolation of strains from a bio-hydrogen plant: Novel [FeFe]-hydrogenases for Exploitation in Biotechnology
No full textBetter catalysts for solar-driven hydrogen producing devices: isolation and characterisation of novel [FeFe]-hydrogenases from the bacterial consortium of a pilot plant producing biohydrogen from waste
No full textBiohydrogen and biomethane production sustained by untreated matrices and alternative application of compost waste
No full text© 2016 Elsevier Ltd Biohydrogen and biomethane production offers many advantages for environmental protection over the fossil fuels or the existing physical-chemical methods for hydrogen and methane synthesis. The aim of this study is focused on the exploitation of several samples from the composting process: (1) a mixture of waste vegetable materials (“Mix”); (2) an unmatured compost sample (ACV15); and (3) three types of green compost with different properties and soil improver quality (ACV1, ACV2 and ACV3). These samples were tested for biohydrogen and biomethane production, thus obtaining second generation biofuels and resulting in a novel possibility to manage renewable waste biomasses. The ability of these substrates as original feed during dark fermentation was assayed anaerobically in batch, in glass bottles, in order to determine the optimal operating conditions for hydrogen and/or methane production using “Mix” or ACV1, ACV2 or ACV3 green compost and a limited amount of water. Hydrogen could be produced with a fast kinetic in the range 0.02–2.45mLH2g−1VS, while methane was produced with a slower kinetic in the range 0.5–8mLCH4g−1VS. It was observed that the composition of each sample influenced significantly the gas production. It was also observed that the addition of different water amounts play a crucial role in the development of hydrogen or methane. This parameter can be used to push towards the alternative production of one or another gas. Hydrogen and methane production was detected spontaneously from these matrices, without additional sources of nutrients or any pre-treatment, suggesting that they can be used as an additional inoculum or feed into single or two-stage plants. This might allow the use of compost with low quality as soil improver for alternative and further applications
Expression of different types of [FeFe]-hydrogenase genes in bacteria isolated from a population of a bio-hydrogen pilot-scale plant
No full text[FeFe]-hydrogenases are the enzymes responsible for high yield H 2 production during dark fermentation in bio-hydrogen production plants. The culturable bacterial population present in a pilot-scale plant efficiently producing H2 from waste materials was isolated, classified and identified by means of 16S rDNA gene analysis. The culturable part of the mixed population consists of nine bacterial species that include non-hydrogen producers (Lactobacillus, Enterococcus and Staphylococcus) and several Clostridium that are directly responsible for H2 production. An extensive analysis of the expression of [FeFe]-hydrogenases in the three best producer strains was achieved by RT-PCR, covering the complete set of known genes for each species. This revealed that during H2 production there are several different [FeFe]-hydrogenases simultaneously expressed, with genes belonging to the same phylogenetic and structural classification sharing similar transcriptional profiles. © 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
