Abstract
This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Dickens, Victorian Culture and Italy conference hosted in June 2007 by the University of Genoa, with the support of the University of Milan and of Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus. The collection features research into the perception of Italy and the reception of Italian culture by English writers, and, more marginally, on the reception of Victorian writers in Italy. In their response to Italy, the Victorians inevitably reacted to constructions of Italy they inherited from eighteenth-century pastoral, Gothic fiction, and Romantic poetry, onto which they grafted their own specific aesthetic, moral and political concerns, as well as their reactions to contemporary Italy. The essays included in this volume show that as a land of political restlessness, torn between its modernising tendencies and its allegiance to the past, Italy became an ideal mirror where the problems of Victorian self-representation could be projected and displaced. Thus, in tracing a variety of responses to Italy (as picturesque or not, as politically unstable, as an inspiration, alternative or other), this collection invites the reader to reconsider the role of Italy in the Victorian imagination, offering new highlights on the fecund and complex relationship between English and Italian literatures, English culture and Italian Risorgimento, Roman Catholicism, Italian history and art.

Alessandro Vescovi teaches English Literature at the Università degli Studi di Milano; his research focuses on Dickens and Indian writing in English.

Luisa Villa teaches English literature at the Università degli Studi di Genova; she has written extensively on Victorian and especially late Victorian literature.

Paul Vita is a Professor of English at Saint Louis University Madrid Campus; his research focuses on the novel, narrative theory, and Victorian literature and culture.


Information
Type: Collection
Language(s): English
Year: 2009
Project: English Library: the Literature Bookshelf
Number of page(s): 362
Code (printed): ISBN 978-88-7699-163-9, ISSN 2037-2515
Code (electronic): ISBN 978-88-7699-164-6, ISSN 2037-2523 - Open Access Publication

Book Sections
Annemarie McAllister (2009) “A Pair of Naked Legs and a Ragged Red Scarf”: An Overview of Victorian Discourses on Italy. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 19-43.

Eleanor McNees (2009) Accounts for the Arm-Chair Traveller: The Italy of Badham and Dickens. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 45-60.

Jane Jordan (2009) The Peasant and the Picturesque in Ouida’s Italy. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 61-79.

Lindsey Cordery (2009) Beautiful Freedom: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Casa Guidi Windows. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 83-97.

Renzo D’Agnillo (2009) “Now in Happier Air”: Arthur Hugh Clough’s “Amours de Voyage” and Italian Republicanism. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 99-111.

Toni Cerutti (2009) “The Last Austrian Who Left Venice”: Anthony Trollope’s Pictures from Italy. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 113-133.

Allan C. Christensen (2009) Genova La Superba in Novels by Giovanni Ruffini and Henrietta Jenkin. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 135-148.

Alessandro Vescovi (2009) Dickens and Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 151-167.

Rita Severi (2009) The Italian Influence in the Plays of Charles Dickens. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 169-180.

Fabio A. Camilletti (2009) Dante’s Vita Nova and the Victorians: The Hidden Image behind Rossetti’s Giotto Painting the Portrait of Dante. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 181-192.

Luisa Villa (2009) Victorian Uses of the Italian Past: The Case of Camilla Rucellai in George Eliot’s Romola. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 193-207.

Odile Boucher-Rivalain (2009) Ruskin and Architecture: The Impact of His Early Travels in Italy (1830s-1840s). In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 211-224.

Marianne Camus (2009) Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Italy. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 225-235.

Lilian Nayder (2009) Catherine Dickens in Italy: Marriage, Mesmerism and Madame de la Rue. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 237-246.

Angelica Palumbo (2009) Edward Lear in Italy: Mediterranean Landscapes as Inspiration for a Rhizomic System of Nonsense. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 247-261.

Shannon Russell (2009) Italian Transformations: Gender and National Identity in Madame de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy and Selected Works of Charles Dickens. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 265-277.

Mario Martino (2009) A Little (of) Italy in Early Dickens: End in the Beginning?. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 279-290.

Joel J. Brattin (2009) Middlemarch: The Novel, the Manuscript, and Italy. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 291-300.

Alain Jumeau (2009) The Visit to Genoa in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 301-313.

Gerald Majer (2009) Gift and Narrative in Charles Dickens’s “The Italian Prisoner”. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 317-328.

Stefania Parisi (2009) Speech, Ghost Language, and Heteroglossia in Two Italian Translations of A Christmas Carol. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 329-338.

Grahame Smith (2009) Dickens and Italian Cinema. In: The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art (Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita eds). Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, pp. 339-346.