90 research outputs found
Interview with Rebecca Johns, Author of \u3cem\u3eThe Countess\u3c/em\u3e
No full textToday on MLS we invite Rebecca Johns, author of Icebergs to discuss her recently released new novel, The Countess, a fictional memoir about the Hungarian noblewoman who was the archetype for many vampire stories. Johns speaks to us about the excitement of doing research for her work and writing about a much misunderstood character in history
Odoardo Fialetti (1573-c.1638): the interrelation of Venetian art and anatomy, and his importance in England
No full textBolognese artist Odoardo Fialetti (1573 – c.1638) is a fascinating figure upon which curiously little work has been done. Though he is a rarely discussed pupil of Tintoretto, Fialetti’s oeuvre is vast (some 55 known paintings and approximately 450 prints) and incredibly diverse. His work encompasses religious subjects, portraits, books on drawing and sport, maps, and illustration for treatises on city defences, literary texts, and anatomy. His work was influential for several hundred years after his death, not only in Venice and northern Italy, but also in France where his designs were used as decoration on faïence produced at Nevers, and England, where his paintings were much admired at court. Fialetti’s close association with Sir Henry Wotton, and the careful copy of his drawing book made by Alexander Browne in the mid-seventeenth century, attest to his impact on the formation of an Italianate sensibility in the appreciation of the visual arts in Early Modern England. In the realm of science, Fialetti’s influence can be deduced from his drawings of curiously animated cadavers in detailed landscapes to those of future generations of anatomists and illustrators throughout Europe. Because of the diverse associations and projects throughout his career, the study of Fialetti is inherently interdisciplinary, encompassing the history of art, history of science and history of the Venetian book trade, as well as crossing geographical boundaries in linking Venetian art and English tastes of the late renaissance and early baroque. Through examination of his extant oeuvre, as well as discussion of lost work, I aim to recognise Fialetti’s status as an artist responding to contemporary artistic debates (disegno versus colorito), a changing cultural climate and the burgeoning importance of the printed medium
Depression and Gender: The Expression and Experience of Melancholy in the Eighteenth Century
No full textThis thesis investigates the life and work of six eighteenth-century writers, two male and four female. It explores their experience of depression through their letters and other autobiographical material, and examines the ways in which they represent melancholy in their poetry and prose. The subject of Chapter Two is Thomas Gray, whose real life persona as the lonely intellectual is also identifiable in his poetry. The Scottish poet Robert Fergusson is studied in Chapter Three. Fergusson’s lively and vigorous mind was shattered in the months leading up to his death, during which time some of his writing became darkly nihilistic. Chapter Four looks at Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, a lifelong depressive who often wrote about her feelings of despair in her poetry. Chapter Five explores Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was a courageous and controversial figure, but despite her resilience, on occasion in her letters she reveals her vulnerability and susceptibility to low spirits, a mood which is sometimes expressed in her creative writing. Sarah Scott, whose life and work have not yet been considered in relation to the subject of melancholy, is examined in Chapter Six. Her novel includes several low-spirited and depressed female characters who are continually seeking asylum from a hostile world. Chapter Seven analyses Charlotte Smith, a mother of twelve children whose unhappy marriage ended in separation. Smith wrote extensively about her depression in her letters, prefaces, poetry and novels.
This study shows that the women in particular use their writing on melancholy and depression to express their discontent with the confined way in which they are often expected to live out their lives
Grace Aguilar’s historical romances
No full textPhDMy dissertation looks critically at Grace Aguilar’s historical romance novels and short
stories, and investigates English writers’ uses of history in early- to mid-nineteenth century
fiction. Shifting the current critical emphasis on Aguilar’s Jewish texts, I
have analyzed the ways in which Aguilar revises the genres of the national tale, the
gothic romance, and the medieval romance in order to demonstrate her participation
in the construction of nineteenth-century domestic values.
In Chapter One, I introduce to critical debate Aguilar’s juvenilia, relying on
unpublished manuscripts and novels published only in the twentieth century to
establish the origins of Aguilar’s interest in history and historical writing. Locating
Aguilar’s narrative style in the early nineteenth-century national tale, I show that as a
child Aguilar envisioned the English and Scottish nations as a family, making
domesticity both a private and a public—a female and a male—value.
Chapter Two focuses on Aguilar’s use of history to express nineteenth-century
domestic ideals in her version of the gothic romance. Deploying the setting of the
Catholic Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, Aguilar writes gothic tales that unite
Jewish and Protestant gender values. She makes heroic the Jewish female martyr to
suggest not only that nineteenth-century Protestants and Jews share similar domestic
principles, but also that Jewish women could be seen as ideal models for Protestant
women.
Finally, in Chapter Three I explore Aguilar’s participation in the nineteenth-century
medievalist tradition by reflecting on her revision of nineteenth-century literary
idealizations of the Middle Ages. In these short stories, Aguilar fictionalizes the
sixteenth-century European chivalric ethos, looking critically at the role of women in
court society at the end of the Middle Ages. Deploying the tropes prevalent in
popular nineteenth-century anti-medievalist fiction, Aguilar debunks celebrations of
the Middle Ages by showing how chivalry is antagonistic to nineteenth-century
domesticity
L'autore dell'Epitome Polinorese e il mito della contessa Matilde di Canossa nella storiografia ferrarese del Trecento e Quattrocento
No full textCopyright confirmation in progressThis paper is a survey of the tradition and reception of Matelda countess of Canossa through Ferrarese sources between 14th-15th centuries. The author of the Epitome Polinorese is revealed for the first time.18-20 September 200
The 'true use of reading' : Sarah Fielding and mid eighteenth-century literary strategies.
No full textPhDThe aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and
works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) established her identity as an author.
The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of
writing and reading.
Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties
by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work
of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and
the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness
toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two
distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar
and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and
on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people. The
dual targets direct her to devise various strategies. She tries to
appeal to those who can endorse and appreciate her moral values as well
as her learning. Her writings and letters testify that she is sensitive
to the demands of the literary market, trying to lead the taste of readers
by inventing new forms.
The thesis opens with an overview of Sarah Fielding's career,
followed by a consideration of her critical attention to the roles of
reading. I go on to examine the narrative structures and strategies
she deploys, with a particular emphasis on her use of the epistolary
method. The following chapter deals with her attention to the reading
of the moral message tangibly embodied in her educational writing. It
is followed by an analysis of the activity which earned her a reputation
as a learned woman. Various as the forms of her works are, they invariably
reflect her attempt to balance herself between the two demands of
inventiveness and familiarity
Peter Alderson Smith, W. B. Yeats and the Tribes of Danu: Three Views of Irelands Fairies Colin Smythe; Barnes and Noble, 1987
No full textExcerpt
This is a very ambitious work, in which the author seeks to 1) present early Irish beliefs concerning the Tuatha De Danann (Tribes of the Goddess Danu) as revealed in medieval Irish literary tradition; 2) describe the modern (19th- and 20th-century) Irish folk beliefs concerning the fairies, thought to derive from the Tuatha De Danann; and 3) investigate the changes in W.B. Yeats’s views of the Otherworld between his writing of The Countess Cathleen and the publication of Responsibilities
“Collaborative Production” and the Irish Boom - Work Organisation, Partnership and Direct Involvement in Irish Workplaces
Full text linkA significant strand of recent social-scientific writing on Ireland has assigned great importance to various forms of “collaborative production”: new forms of work organisation, partnership and direct employee involvement — even suggesting that their growing diffusion might have played a major role in Ireland’s exceptional economic performance during the 1990s. This paper draws on the University College Dublin national workplace survey of employee relations to present an assessment of the degree to which new modes of collaborative production have gained ground in Ireland during the 1990s. While collaborative production is undoubtedly significant in many Irish workplaces, “exclusionary” forms of decision-making are shown to dominate the postures of establishments towards the handling of change. Arguments pointing to the “transformation”, actual or imminent, of work practices and employment relations in Ireland are rejected. Change in Ireland is shown to have much in common with developments in other economies, particularly those characterised by “Anglo-American” institutional systems, which are not readily permeable to collaborative production in its various modes.
Tudor women writers fashioning masculinity
Full text linkThis thesis contributes to the growing interest in early modern masculinity and its literary representations by introducing texts by women writers into dialogue with their male-authored counterparts. It argues for a more nuanced approach that recognises that the concepts of masculinity and femininity can only be fully understood when studied in relation with each other.
The first chapter explores how, notwithstanding the wisdom of conduct books and marriage guides, the demands of the state may not always be commensurate with those of the domestic realm and shows that this conflict necessitates a rethinking of existing definitions of masculinity by focusing on selected writings of the Tudor sisters Mary and Elizabeth and Jane Fitzalan’s *Tragedie of Iphigeneia*. The second chapter identifies how Elizabeth’s unique discursive strategies were designed to elicit support from her male subjects and subdue the belligerence that simmered under polemic like John Stubbs’ *Gaping Gulf*. In her letters to Anjou, the chapter examines how Elizabeth manoeuvred around her position as a beloved and as a monarch to fashion a husband who would not only be sympathetic but also subordinate to her political authority. This chapter also shows how the fabulous world of John Lyly’s *Galatea* consummates the Queen’s desire for the ideal male subject. The final chapter investigates the construction of martial manhood. It juxtaposes Mary Sidney’s *The Tragedy of Antonie* with William Shakespeare’s *Antony and Cleopatra* to determine how the figure of Cleopatra, common to both plays, challenges and revises the martial code of masculinity as embodied by Antony. By examining the authorial position appropriated by Cleopatra in the plays and its impact on the narrative, this chapter also extends this thesis’ interest in the extent to which female characters within texts compete for diegetic control with male protagonists
Sarah Fielding: Satire and Subversion in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
No full textThis study of Sarah Fielding (1710―68) is an original contribution to Fielding scholarship that has a dual purpose: to support those who are striving to re-introduce her to the modern literary landscape in an effort to restore her eighteenth-century literary standing, and to firmly establish Fielding as an early feminist writer. It is argued here that throughout her oeuvre Fielding challenged prevailing traditions that denied women a choice, particularly in education, employment and marriage. These themes are also considered in the political treatises of Mary Astell (1666―1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759―97), who are now widely recognised as feminist writers.
It is further argued that Fielding’s subversion in fiction of the English patriarchal system is underscored by her unorthodox performance in the literary arena. This is fully explored alongside her use of sentimentalism as a literary tool with which she challenges her seemingly inhumane society. Fielding’s interest in ‘the Labyrinths of the Mind’ (in modern terms, human psychology) will also be addressed as will her placement in the history of feminism and her placement in the sentimental novel tradition. Fielding’s performance as a literary critic will be compared with the few female authors who, like her, dared to publish literary criticism during her writing career. Accordingly, extracts from Fielding’s novels and her two critical pamphlets will be thoroughly examined.
An updated biography of Fielding that is also included here will provide evidence for a further claim, that her fiction is autobiographical in part. A comprehensive account of Fielding’s performance as a literary critic forms the final chapter of this work. It is the first full-length examination of her contribution to the genre and includes an appraisal of her recently unearthed critical pamphlet entitled A Comparison Between the Horace of Corneille and The Roman Father of Mr. Whitehead (1750) that is yet to be formerly attributed to her. Ultimately this study of Fielding will go far beyond what has previously been written about this remarkable eighteenth-century author, particularly regarding her feminist activity
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