University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2008 Travelling with the Duke Anne Kruse University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Kruse, Anne, Travelling with the Duke, Doctor of Creative Arts thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2008. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/944 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact Manager Repository Services: [email protected]. Volume One: The Novel Travelling with the Duke A novel submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF CREATIVE ARTS from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by ANNE KRUSE, MASTER OF CREATIVE ARTS FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS 2008 CERTIFICATION I, Anne Kruse, declare that this novel and exegesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Creative Arts, in the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The documents have not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Anne Kruse 24 March 2008 Abstract My submission for the degree is comprised of two components: the text of my novel Travelling with the Duke and the supporting exegesis Travelling with the Duke: Origins, Structure, Technique. Travelling with the Duke has been accepted for publication by Random House in early 2009. Travelling with the Duke is a romantic comedy set in Australia and Italy. It is a comic variation on the theme of the fatal charm of Italy. The novel is written in the tradition of fictions about English-speakers travelling to Italy. The novel explores the fatal attraction of Italy, Italian culture, and Tuscany in particular for three generations of Australian women. Renaissance art is a major motif, explored from the perspectives of experts and amateurs from Italy and Australia. Particular art works inform the structure of the narrative and shape the meaning of the novel. Piero della Francesca’s fifteenth-century portrait of the Duke of Urbino is vivid and present throughout, his relationship with Nelly develops with the plot. As the novel opens, Nelly, understood by her family to have no friends, relies on the Duke for companionship and advice. By the novel’s close Nelly has acquired a cast of more current confidantes and friends. For Nelly’s daughter, Jenny, the novel is a journey from personal fantasies and loneliness through to a confrontation with renaissance art in Florence as a threat followed by personal transformation and reconciliation. Nelly’s granddaughter, Katherine, an Australian art historian, is transformed from limited professional observation of art to the reality of romance, the erotic and artistic creativity. The exegesis, Travelling with the Duke: Origins, Structure, Technique, explains the influences that have shaped the novel, and its narrative structure and literary concerns. I am a playwright with a considerable body of work including plays that have been performed in Australia and internationally. I have a long connection with theatre as an actor and director. For long periods of my life I have lived and worked in Italy; and like many of the characters, I remain a student of the language. The exegesis explores how my background and experiences have informed the style and narrative. The exegesis describes and analyses other main structural and stylistic issues including: the genre of the English-speaking traveller in Italy; intertextual use of literary models and renaissance art; and literary theory. E.M.Forster provides a central reference point for my interest in the travel genre. The application of theory to my work is examined in relation to M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of the novel; theory that is founded in an interest in the historical and social world and the relations between representation and reality. Acknowledgements The novel could not have been completed without the help and support of many people. I would particularly like to thank John Scott who was with me at the outset, and whose humour and encouragement meant so much in those early days. I also thank Jan Hutchinson for her assistance with the exegesis. TRAVELLING with the DUKE Anne Kruse ©2008 Table of Contents Chapter One 1 Chapter Two 19 Chapter Three 36 Chapter Four 52 Chapter Five 56 Chapter Six 65 Chapter Seven 74 Chapter Eight 85 Chapter Nine 88 Chapter Ten 100 Chapter Eleven 114 Chapter Twelve 134 Chapter Thirteen 136 Chapter Fourteen 149 Chapter Fifteen 157 Chapter Sixteen 171 Chapter Seventeen 188 Chapter Eighteen 195 Chapter Nineteen 198 Chapter Twenty 205 Chapter Twenty One 211 Chapter Twenty Two 228 Chapter Twenty Three 234 Chapter Twenty Four 244 Chapter Twenty Five 255 Chapter Twenty Six 261 Chapter Twenty Seven 264 Chapter Twenty Eight 277 TRAVELLING with the DUKE 1 ONE La fuga - the escape ‘Buon giorno!’ ‘Buon giorno, Paolo,’ Nelly replied from under the bedclothes. ‘Una bella giornata!’ ‘Bellissima!’ said Nelly, sitting up to look out of the window. Nelly Larkin lay back in bed listening to Paolo, the announcer on 2IT, the Italian- Australian radio station, giving his virtuoso performance of the morning news. The fact that she understood very little only added to her enjoyment. Much better to imagine the variations on accidents, natural disasters, tragedies, acts of heroism, terrorism, political unrest, uprisings, and mean minded government policy. At her age she considered herself part of the history that was repeating itself. As for the weather? Well, she already knew that it was una bella giornata. As Paolo’s voice rose and fell, racing from his pizzicato on the double consonants to the lovingly elongated adverbs, Nelly closed her eyes, seeing him as the young Marcello Mastroiani, standing at a microphone on a dais between two Roman columns. ‘Ciao Paolo,’ she said, as she turned off the radio and heard the predictable sounds of Mrs Ellis, her downstairs neighbor, dragging pot plants around her balcony. She’s at it again, thought Nelly. Any moment now she’ll be feeding the currawongs with dog biscuits, swearing at that black cat, and lying in wait for me. Getting out of bed, Nelly pulled off her old silk pajamas and stood looking at herself in the long cheval mirror. Well aware that there was always a choice between seeing the person who stared back at her or seeing the person she wanted to see, Nelly decided it was a day for TRAVELLING with the DUKE 2 facing up to reality. Over the years she had collected expressions she had heard, or read, believing they presented a fair description of her development. She had moved beyond ‘full bloom’ to ‘matronly softness’, but now? ‘Cadente,’ she said. ‘Drooping’ or ‘sagging’ were such unpleasant words, whereas the connotations of the Italian word were much more gratifying. ‘Cadente,’ she repeated, licking her finger, and attempting to smooth the wild, black eyebrows that were such a surprising contrast to her silver hair. She made a mental note to look up ‘eyebrows’ in her Italian dictionary, and pulled a face at herself in the mirror. Two black currawongs swooped past the window, wolf whistling, as she lay down on the floor to do her stretching exercises while reciting the present tense of her Italian verb for the day - fuggire - to escape. After rolling over to the all fours position, she got to her feet with some difficulty and wrapped herself in the bed cover. She opened the window, took three deep breaths and shouted the first person of her new verb to the tree tops. ‘Fuggo!’ * ‘I think I’d like a change of scenery,’ was how she put it to Mrs Ellis. It was later that morning when Nelly sat wedged in between the pot plants, drinking weak, milky tea, while trying to slip one of Mrs Ellis's stale milk arrowroot biscuits into her pocket. She nicks them from the nursing home, Nelly thought, yapping away at her frail little sister, kissing her on the head while she pops them into her handbag. Nelly moved her hand from her pocket and, fiddling with her gold chain, smiled at Mrs Ellis who was TRAVELLING with the DUKE 3 eying her suspiciously. Mrs Ellis sat for a moment, staring at Nelly’s pocket. Suddenly she jumped to her feet and darted around picking up squashed snails and tossing them over the balcony. ‘Miserable little buggers,’ she said, ‘they’re after my woolly-headed cacti.’ ‘I can't imagine why,’ said Nelly. ‘Prickles don't bother them,' said Mrs Ellis. ‘Salt's the thing, frizzles them up in no time.’ ‘So it does,’ said Nelly. ‘I'd forgotten.’ ‘Oh, we oldies forget.’ Amanda Ellis took every opportunity of reminding Nelly of her age. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the morning and can't for the life of me remember who I am.’ She chuckled, turned on the hose, and began to water the succulents growing in her long-departed children's gum boots. ‘Graham’s lamb's ears are doing beautifully,’ she said, ‘but I'll have to keep an eye on this anexopia of Lucy's, she was always the difficult one.’ With a sigh she dragged the anexopia away from the other plants into a shady corner. ‘The Blue Mountains would be nice,’ she added vaguely. Nelly was counting the snails hiding behind a black rubber gum boot. ‘They'll be all bubbles and froth after a good sprinkling,’ Mrs Ellis continued with relish, ‘but there's no remedy for this.’ She handed Nelly a wilted leaf from the anexopia. ‘Just think, that silly Lucy in New York with a merchant bank and it was me who started her off.