132 research outputs found
“Changing Authorial Perspectives in R. L. Stevenson’s Pacific Travel Narratives”, in 11.2 (2014).
No full textR. L. Stevenson’s Pacific travels shaped the last part of the author’s life both as a man and as a writer, changing his personal and authorial attitude. His first cruise from San Francisco to the Pacific on the yacht Casco was not only ‘the dream of a life realised’ (Letters 193), but also represented a business opportunity, since the literary agent S. S. McClure suggested that he write travel letters with the promise of an income able to defray the expenses of his journey and provide a good profit. Stevenson’s letters were later to become a volume of anthropological considerations on the culture of the Pacific, In the South Seas (1890). The neat difference between the letters and this volume, which however share the same content, relies on the author’s own idea that his cruise had posed several ‘questions of race and civilization’ (Letters 6: 213), requiring a strong sociological focus hardly to be conveyed through letter-writing. The aim of this paper is to present Stevenson’s account of his Pacific experience as conveyed through both In the South Seas and his letters, in order to underline the author’s growing anthropological, historical and legal commitment, which was to have a crucial influence on his Pacific narrative fiction
"Introduction" to She. Explorations into a Romance
No full textThis collection aims to present She as a novel whose essential value, exceeding the boundaries of adventure fiction, depends on the link with its late Victorian context. Written as a story of imagination, infused with mysticism, supernatural, and occultism, She also dramatizes nineteenth-century historical, cultural, and anthropological features, such as the existential doubts fostered by scientific discoveries and religious hesitation, the sense of precariousness produced by social and cultural transitions, the complex question of British Imperial authority. Also, the ethical themes of good and evil, the idea of romantic love as one of the few enduring elements of man’s life, and the woman question are part of the novel’s cultural background. By approaching She under a variety of perspectives, the essays give voice to a number of hermeneutical qualities that can be traced under an apparently undemanding fantasy narrative. The contributors have all written on H. Rider Haggard on different occasions, and some of them have the merit of being the main referents of Haggardian criticism today
E. M. Forster Revisited: Epistemic Disconnection, Otherness and Beyond, ed. by Gloria Lauri-Lucente, Francesco Marroni and Tania Zulli, Merope 61-62 (Gennaio-Luglio 2015)
No full text“‘A phrase of Virgil speaks of English places’: the influence of European and Classical Literature on R. L. Stevenson’s South Sea Tales”
No full text“Dickens Sperimentale”, nota recensiva a Charles Dickens, America, Introduzione di Michael Slater; Mario Martino, Dickens e la crisi della scrittura; Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
No full textBiancamaria Rizzardi Perutelli, Aracne. La sfida femminile alla poesia vittoriana, Urbino, Quattro Venti, 1999
No full textBram Stoker, Il segreto del fiorire dell’oro ed altri racconti, traduzione di Vanna Murri, a cura di Daniela Carpi, Bologna, Re Enzo Editrice, 1998
No full text
Come leggere A Passage to India
No full textA Passage to India fu l’ultima opera scritta da Forster. Pubblicato nel 1924 e ispirato da due viaggi compiuti dall’autore in India, il romanzo non ha solo l’obiettivo di esplorare i complessi rapporti tra Oriente e Occidente, ma è anche un’analisi delle possibili convergenze di valori individuali e sociali colti nella prospettiva degli ideali umanistico-liberali. Gli interrogativi che Forster si pone sono gli stessi che avevano occupato le sue opere prece- denti, contestualizzati in un diverso scenario: è possibile creare legami tra gli esseri umani? Che cosa acca- de quando i principi morali su cui si fonda la società sono dislocati in un territorio estraneo? I dilemmi esistenziali possono trovare soluzioni abbracciando la dimensione mistica e spirituale della vita?
Dal punto di vista formale, A Passage to India assume un ruolo importante nella letteratura dell’inizio del Novecento come rappresentazione del disagio legato alla forma del romanzo in quanto genere letterario non più adatto a ritrarre la complessità dell’esistenza. Allo stesso tempo, esso delinea la volontà di cercare nuove forme di espressione che si allontanano dal realismo ottocentesco privilegiando i livelli simbolici della coscienza, senza però risolversi nell’astrazione del modernismo. Come leggere “A Passage to India” si propone di fornire una lettura che evidenzi la posizione di Forster in bilico tra sentire tardo- vittoriano e impulsi antivittoriani, mostrando come, dalla destabilizzazione generata dal conflitto degli opposti, emerga il quadro del rapporto tra individuo e mondo
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