1,721,128 research outputs found
Charles Dickens and Italy: The 'New Picturesque'
No full textThis essay made its early appearance in a volume entitled Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy, edited by F. Orestano and M. Hollington, in 2009. Subsequently, in 2012, this essay was selected to appear among the best critical production on Dickens all over the world, and collected within the book Global Dickens edited by J. O. Jordan and N. Perera
Virginia Woolf's 'Between the Acts:History, Herstory, 'History in the Raw'
No full textThe essay examines Virgiania Woolf's last novel, Between the Acts, with reference to her lifelong involvement with history and history-writing. The critical issue of history (not only as account of the past, but also as the present moment) was dealt with by Woolf according to different concepts: firstly as traditional history, the lives of great men in Carlylean style; then Herstory, or history seen from a gendered (feminine) point of view; lastly, in this novel, history as the product of many documents, among which newspaper reports, the radio, photographs, laws, letters, or, as Woolf says, "history in the raw.
Charles Dickens and Italy: the 'new picturesque'
No full textThis essay focuses on the notion of picturesque representation entertained by Dickens before and after his Italian experience, suggesting that contrary to the stereotyped exploitment of the associations with ruins, Dickens deals with the visual impact of the Italian scene by dwelling on purely formal values which enhance the grotesque nature of the scene and its unconventional description
Contracting Authority, Expanding the Canon: The Case of Virginia Woolf
No full textWithin the general scope of the conference, the essay focusses on the one hand on the ways in which Virginia Woolf discussed the principle of authority in her essays, reviews and criticism; on the other hand, the restricted status Woolf assigns to the author (as compared with Victorian authorship) is compensated for in the bold achievement of The Waves (1931). Orestano argues that in this novel the authority of the novelist, while conventionally limited, is augmented by a deliberate move towards, and appropriation of, scientific authority and its epistemic view of the nature of the universe. The theory of the light waves, and of particles, as expounded by Eddington and Jeans in Woolf's times, and explained today by Hawking, provides the fittest key of intepretation for the seven characters of The Waves, their colours, character, and destiny
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, and the discourse of knowledge: a dialogue between the resolved soul and created pleasure
No full textThe author examines the work of Virginia Woolf, and specifically her novel "The Waves", paying attention to the discourse of knowledge as it emerges between body and mind and along a philosophical tradition that casts them in opposition
Charles Dickens and the Vertigo of the List: A Few Proposals
No full textThe essay offers a reading of a frequently-used device in Dickens's fiction, namely his lists; the author derives from Eco's Vertigo of the List a system of classification of different list types and their functions in order to investigate Dickens's manifold strategies of meaning
Review of Laura Peters (ed.) , Dickens and Childhood
No full textOrestano examines the many contributions to the "Library of essays on Charles Dickens" series, published by Ashgate. The volume on Dickens and Childhood, which gathers many eminent authors, who are well-known in the field of Dickens studies, includes manifold viewpoints on the concept of childhood but not often centers on Dickens's reception as an author for children or on his works addressing a yoing audience
Jacob's Room : crisi della prospettiva e Trionfo della Morte
No full textThe author examines the novel "Jacob's Room" (1921) by Virginia Woolf, emphasising the experimental attitude that characterises fictional discourse. Exposed to recent art theories and art criticism by Roger Fry and Clive Bell, and to the visual realisations of her sister Vanessa, Woolf embraces a new strategy that lessens the prominence of the plot as a chronological pespective and represents chracters and events with at once modern and medieval. The comparison offered is between this novel and the medieval genre called "Trionfo della morte"
"Tramps": Dickens's Modern Rhapsody
No full textThis essay offers a reading of the tramp as a figure who stepped out of Dickens's 'All Year Round', and whose freedom and restlessness underwent a cultural transformation towards the end of the nineteenth century, from vagrants and gypsies to middle-class tourists rambling through the countryside. The author examines Dickens's own taxonomy of tramps, differentiates the tramp from the flaneur, and then focuses on the evolving images of the tramp, which, the author claims, will culminate in Chaplin's films
Il caso di Snitter e Rowf (e di molti altri animali): scienza e crudeltà in "The Plague Dogs" di Richard Adams
No full textThe essay focuses on the history and debate on vivisection, offering an account of the first dawning of humane feelings toward animals during the eighteenth century, as in Hogarth’s Four stages of cruelty; it then moves to the foundation of associations for the protection of animal rights, such as RSPCA, NAVS, and finally IAAPEA, and the Victorian debate which cast scientific research against the practice of vivisection. The culminating episode was the story of the Brown Dog, and the riots that took place in London, in 1907, when medical students from London University destroyed the monument placed in memory of a vivisected terrier dog in Battersea Park. The core of the essay is provided by the analysis of the novel by Richard Adams "The Plague Dogs"(1977) in which Adams builds the story of two dogs who manage to escape from the laboratory where they undergo cruel experiments and surgery. The setting of the story is the sacred ground of the Lake District, ironically a nature sanctuary. Realistic hints, such as the names and action of renowned animal activists and naturalists(Brigid Brophy, Peter Scott, Ronald Lockley) set the story at the core of the recent debate on vivisection. Following the two dogs in their pilgrimage, Adams also shows how newspapers and the media can exploit the news, and involve the Army and the Ministry, by suggesting that the dogs are contaminated with the plague. The happy ending follows, while the issue of vivisection is still the object of future debate, insofar as the author does not provide a solution to it, but just releases the two dogs from their painful captivity
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