Raffaella Simili The preface to the first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) opens with the following words : "the event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed by Dr. Darwin and some of the physiological writers of Germany as not of impossible occurence" [SHELLEY M. 1993, p. 3]1. [...]
Stuart Curran [T]hough Switzerland is the country which for severale years I have been particularly desirous to visit, I do not feel inclined to ramble any further this years. [Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written [..] in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), letter 25 (the last)] [...] [B]idding adieu to Switzerland, we embarked on a boat [...]
Maurizio Ascari It is almost a truism to state that landscape is not an objective element, but the outcome of a subjective and culturally determined process,[1] since “every perception is at the same time a projection” [MILANI 2001, p. 14. My translation]. Far from being an innocent act of recognition, the result of a supposedly [...]
Rather than wrestle in the abstract with the concepts «Romantic Irony» and «Metadrama», I will begin with two examples, modern and ancient, in order to triangulate the direction that I wish to pursue in the drama of the Romantic era. The modern example is Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977). The ancient example [...]
For some time now we have recognized that the «eastern» or «oriental» verse narratives of the early nineteenth century were more than just popular, fashionable entertainment.Writing broadly about the phenomenon of Romantic orientalism in 1994, Marilyn Butler observed that as «Britain transformed itself into an Empire […] orientalizing poets […] imagined such empires as lightly [...]
Diego Saglia Spain - bold, ardent, melancholy Spain - the only land in Europe that the children of the East seem to have cared to make their home; - the nurse of romance, after it left its cradle in the Arab desarts [sic!]; - the glowing mother of chivalry […] - a land in itself [...]
«Je suis mon ouvrage» Olympe de Gourges Franca Zanelli Quarantini Un mese dopo l’esecuzione di Olympe de Gouges, avvenuta il 3 novembre 1793 in Place de la Concorde, il giudice di pace Nicolas Thilly, recatosi nell’abitazione della defunta per stendere l’inventario della carte giacenti, si trovò di fronte a un’imponente quantità di manoscritti, varia corrispondenza, [...]
La Questione Romantica > Esotismo/Orientalismo Mirella Billi The fascination for the Orient pervades British culture, literature and the arts and penetrates everyday life particularly from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards. Of course the influence of Oriental culture can be traced back to a more remote past: in the Middle Ages, Eastern [...]
La Questione Romantica > Musica/Letteratura Federica Troisi Chi trova che io non conoscevo Shakespeare quando scrissi il Macbeth [...] Oh, in questo hanno un gran torto! [...] E’ un poeta di mia predilezione, che ho avuto fra le mani dalla mia prima gioventù e che leggo e rileggo continuamente.1 1. Nota preliminare Le celebrazioni [...]
Tilottama Rajan In a fragment of his early Jena drafts, Hegel says: Properly speaking, it belongs to the highest cultural development of the people to say everything in their own language. The concepts that we mark with foreign words seem to be themselves foreign and not to belong to us immediately as our own" [HEGEL [...]