176 research outputs found
Alexandre Dumas figlio, La signora delle Camelie. Traduzione, nota al testo, introduzione e postfazione di Marisa Verna. Introduzione e postfazione tradotti in lingua inglese
No full textIl dramma a tesi di Dumas figlio si propone come un teatro “intelligente”, di riflessione morale, in più o meno aperta polemica con il vaudeville e il puro divertissement.
Il volume contiene, oltre a una nuova traduzione del dramma e della prefazione di Dumas fils (edita a scopi didattici nel 2008 presso EduCatt), un capitolo introduttivo nel quale viene indagata la forza mitogena e la canonicità del testo per la cultura europea ed extraeuropea. Il saggio introduttivo si propone di mettere in luce l’intrinseca dualità del testo stesso, dalla quale si è generato appunto il mito: delle due strutture drammatiche presenti nella pièce (quella neoromantica e quella borghese), è la prima, contro ogni previsione dello stesso Dumas figlio a prevalere nei decenni e poi nel secolo successivo alla sua creazione.
Nel saggio finale si propone invece l’analisi di due rappresentazioni considerate cruciali per la storia drammaturgica del testo (poiché la storia scenica di questo dramma è letteralmente immensa, si propone l’analisi di una rappresentazione coeva, e di una novecentesca), in Francia e in Italia. Segue un brevissimo excursus della fortuna scenica della pièce nel mondo, e una bibliografia selettiva.The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas fils
Marisa Verna ed., Edizioni ETS, Pisa 2011
The drame à thèse by Dumas fils appears as a form of intelligent theatre, proposing moral reflections in at times explicit opposition against the vaudeville and the pure divertissement.
Besides a new translation of the drama and of the preface by Dumas fils (previously published by EduCatt in 2008 for teaching purposes), the volume contains an introductory chapter which investigates the mythopoeic force and the canonicity of the text within the European and non-European cultures. The introductory essay aims at highlighting the intrinsic duality of the text which has originated the myth: of the two dramatic structures which make up the pièce the neo-romantic and the bourgeois one the former prevailed in the years and centuries following its creation, contrary even to any prediction of the author himself. The concluding essay analyzes two performances, in France and in Italy, acknowledged as crucial for the dramaturgical history of the text (since the staging history of this drama is immense, the analysis concerns one coeval performance and one from the 20th century). The essay is followed by a brief digression on the international staging success of the pièce and by a selected bibliography
Verna Reese
No full textVernetta "Verna" Reese is pictured her eighth grade at Uintah High School. She was born to Jacob Burton and Esther Reese on June 24, 1927. She married Author L. Holt. She worked for and retired Boeing Aircraft for thirty years. She died December 7, 2009
The Legacy of Verna E. Pratt.
No full textWhen Ginger Hudson purchased her first Field Guide to Alaskan Wildflowers in 1999, she had no idea she was destined meet the author, Verna Pratt-twelve years later. Today, Ginger is the newsletter editor for the Master Gardeners in Anchorage and secretary of the Native Plant Society. She is enrolled in the UAA MFA Creative Writing and Literary Arts Program to complete her forthcoming publication, The Life and Legacy of Verna Pratt, Alaska's Wildflower Wizard
Sam & Verna
No full textLosing a parent is one of those inevitable moments for which no one is ever truly prepared. For Sam, whose relationship with his mother was never exactly easy, the news of her sudden and accidental death leaves him numb and unsure of how to mourn beyond handling her affairs and attempting to forge on with his life, hand-in-hand with his girlfriend, Arianna. Not long after he buries everything left unsaid along with his mother’s body, however, a series of comical, supernatural experiences clue him in that his mother may be dead, but is far from gone. When Verna returns from the dead as vivacious and intrusive into her son’s life as she was when she was alive, her newfound abilities as a ghost and her mysterious second chance to experience the world and spend time with Sam tear his life asunder. With good intentions and terrible execution, Sam forges onward, hell-bent on doing right by his mother while simultaneously setting her up to haunt and be happy in a way that he failed to while she lived. Sam & Verna takes every trope of every ghost story, horror movie, and mama’s boy tale and twists them into a comic farce with heart (that maybe doesn’t beat) and sass that refuses to remain silent, even in the face of death.M.F.A.by Alexander Rui
Interview of Verna E. Howard
No full textNoted radio evangelist, author and businessman, V. E. Howard was inducted into the Harding College Oral History library on August 14, 1970
Proust et l art de la langue. La synonymie comme idolâtrie linguistique
No full textProust and the art of language. Synonymy as linguistic idolatry. In: SERGIO CIGADA E MARISA VERNA A CURA DI. in La Sinonimia tra langue e parole nei codici italiano e francese,. p. 231-254, MILANO: Vita e Pensiero
The aim of this article is to analyze the impossibility of conceiving of the idea itself of synonymy within the proustian understanding of language and his esthetics.
Since his first theoretical reflections on literary language, Proust considered meaning as the result of a complex dynamics, never established once and for all. In his notes to his translations of John Ruskin, the future author of the Recherche reproaches the English esthetician of looking for linguistic meaning where it cannot be found: in the dictionaries or in the history of words. In this attitude Proust sees the same sin of idolatry that Ruskin shares with Montesquiou and that leads to a confusion between art and life, meaning and words.
This conception of language can be found in the Recherche at different levels. Two of these will be analyzed in this article: the language of the characters and the formation of metaphor. Within the language of the characters it is possible to observe various clue synonyms , or even implicit synonyms , marking meaning shifts, where the similarity of meaning at the level of langue is even more revealing of psychological truths that language ends up always exposing. Within this indirect language studied by Genette, it is clear that there is not just one synonym and that it could not be simply replaced by its equivalent in the dictionary without a serious loss of meaning.
The case of metaphor is even clearer to establish the impossibility of synonymy within the proustian understanding of literary language. Two examples will be presented of sememe metaphors , in which the narrator of the Recherche develops all the semantic directions of the linguistic sign by the metaphorisation of the whole sememe. The word itself is at the origin of a process of metamorphosis of reality of which the metaphor is the textual result. It is from the word, as a total sign and as it lies within the artist s conscience, that all comparisons derive.
Therefore the metaphor does not realize a process of semantic equivalence, it is not a synonym of a word or an expression because it is born from an evocation, from the resounding of a memory that words awake within the soul of the person who produces it. Indeed the proustian style reflects on reality a network of questions where all the potentialities of a meaning are activated. Under these conditions, for a writer to believe in the existence of synonymy is like treason against his duty as an artist, which is not to say trois fois à peu près la même chose , but to find a truth able to give way to that journey through the self that every reader is supposed to begin once the book is fnished.Dès ses premières réflexions théoriques sur la langue littéraire, Proust considère en effet le sens comme le résultat d’une dynamique complexe et jamais établie une fois pour toutes. Dans les notes à ses traductions de John Ruskin, le futur auteur de la Recherche reproche à l’esthéticien anglais de chercher le sens là où il n’est pas : dans les dictionnaires, ou dans l’histoire des mots. Dans cette attitude il y a pour Proust ce péché d’idolâtrie que Ruskin partage avec Montesquiou, et qui pousse à confondre l’art et la vie, le sens et les mots.
Cette conception du langage se retrouve dans la Recherche à plusieurs niveaux ; nous allons en analyser deux : la langue des personnages et la formation de la métaphore. Dans la langue des personnages sont relevables de nombreux ‘synonymes indices’, ou même des synonymes implicites, qui marquent un glissement du sens, où l’analogie de signifié au niveau langue n’en est que plus révélatrice de vérités psychologiques que le langage finit toujours par démasquer. Dans ce « langage indirect » étudié par Genette le synonyme n’en est évidemment pas un, et ne pourrait, sans grave perte de sens, être remplacé par son équivalent du dictionnaire.
Le cas de la métaphore est plus décisif pour une définition de l’impossibilité de la synonymie dans la conception proustienne de la langue littéraire. Nous avons choisi de présenter deux exemples de ‘métaphores sémème’, dans lesquelles le narrateur de la Recherche développe toutes les directions sémantiques du signe langue, en métaphorisant ainsi le sémème entier. Le mot est lui-même source du procès de métamorphose du réel dont la métaphore est le résultat textuel, et c’est à partir du mot, en tant que signe total, tel qu’il est déposé dans la conscience de l’artiste, que se départent les comparaisons.
La métaphore ne marque partant pas un procédé d’équivalence sémantique, elle n’est pas synonyme d’un mot ou d’une expression, car elle naît d’une évocation, d’une résonance mémorielle que les mots déclenchent dans l’esprit de celui qui l’énonce. L’écriture proustienne lance en effet sur le réel « des réseaux d'interrogation », où toutes les virtualités du sens sont actives. Dans ces conditions, croire dans l’existence des synonymes est pour un écrivain une trahison de son devoir d’artiste, qui est de ne pas dire « trois fois à peu près la même chose », mais de trouver une vérité capable de donner lieu au voyage dans soi-même que chaque lecteur est censé commencer, une fois le livre fini
A bookworm who hatched
No full textNoted children's author and storyteller Verna Aardema recounts her life and describes how her daily activities and writing process are interwoven. In this autobiographical account, the noted author reveals stories about her life, writing techniques, and how she interacts with her reading audienceElementary Grad
My Favorite Place: Peter Brown: La Verna Preserve, Bristol
No full textA brief profile of children\u27s author/illustrator Peter Brown. Brown notes his childhood memories of summers in Frenchboro and discusses the ways urban and wild landscapes juxtapose in his books. The La Verna Preserve in Bristol is mentioned as a favorite escape
Odontites verna (Bell.) Dum. subsp. pumila (Nordst.) A. Pedersen in Nederland
No full textThe author gives a brief survey of ecology, distribution, and differences in flowering time of Odontites verna (Bell.) Dum. subsp. verna, subsp. litoralis (Fr.) A. Pedersen, subsp. fennica (Markl.), subsp. serotina (Wettst.) E. F. Warb., and subsp. pumila (Nordst.) A. Pedersen. In a description of the last named differential characters with subsp. serotina are stressed. Subsp. pumila is known from sandy pastures along the coasts of S. W. Sweden, Denmark, N. and N. W. Germany, and the Netherlands. Fig. 1 gives a map, showing the distribution in the Netherlands, based on the material of the Rijksherbarium, Leiden
Sgualdrina, vittima, mezzana: il tabù della sessualità femminile in Dumas fils e Georges Ancey
No full textTrollop, Dupe, Procuress: the women’s sexuality taboo in Dumas fils’ and Georges Ancey’s Theatres
Our goal in this essay is to analyse the “dramatic archetype” of women’s sexuality in the realistic French theatre of the late Nineteenth century. To this end, we have compared two apparently opposite dramas: The Lady of Camellias by Dumas fils (1852) and The Dupe by Georges Ancey (1891).
The Lady of Camellias is a ‘canonical play’ for European culture, staged everywhere in the world during the last century in many languages. Since 1880, when Sarah Bernhardt first performed the heroine, most spectators interpreted the play as a melodramatic work. Marguerite’s character is normally understood in contemporary staging as the “victim of love”, even though she was created by the author as the guilty persona of the play. Marguerite’s death on the stage was meant by Dumas to admonish women adopting unregulated sexual behaviour: the courtesan could indeed be rehabilitated, but in return for her life.
The Dupe by Georges Ancey is the high-water mark reached by the Naturalist avant-garde: the drama exhibits the bourgeois family’s values as a moral falsification, in which everyone searches only his or her own advantage. The main character Adèle is forced by her mother and her sister to marry Albert Bonnet without loving him. Five months after their marriage, she feels intensively attracted by her husband and falls in love with him. Albert betrays her and squanders the family’s patrimony on his mistress. Adèle, nevertheless, keeps carries on loving him and doesn’t want to separate. After having forced her to marry him, her family then forces her to leave her husband. Adèle is alone and by now poor: her sister Marie and her mother have kept the majority of the money and she doesn’t even have the few attentions that Albert gave to her. As she clearly says to her sister, she “needs him” as a physical need. She is, therefore, “sensual”, which is the worst guilt for a woman. The spectators of 1891 derided her as “a head-case, perverted, licentious”: women’s sexual desire is still disquieting and dangerous. The Twentieth Century focus on this topic is based on this theatre, though it was expressed by different aesthetics. Feminine sexuality also permeates Nineteenth Century dramatic production, the Symbolist one included: Berlin’s “Blue Angel” and the cold “men devourer” of Symbolist novels descends from the same sociological archetype
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