Vernon Lee and Re-Imagining the Florentine Renaissance
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Curious Objects and Victorian Collectors: Men, Markets, Museums
Curious Objects and Victorian Collectors: Men, Markets, Museums Submitted by Jessica Lauren Allsop to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in November 2013. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 Abstract This thesis examines the portrayal of gentleman collectors in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century literature, arguing that they often find themselves challenged and destabilised by their collections. The collecting depicted contrasts revealingly with the Enlightenment practices of classification, taxonomy, and commodification, associated with the growth of both the public museum and the market economy. The dominance of such practices was bound up with the way they promoted subject-object relations that defined and empowered masculine identity. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer note that “[i]n the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty” (3). That being so, this study explores how the drive to classify and commodify the material world found oppositional, fictional form in gothicly inflected texts depicting a fascinating but frightening world of unknowable, alien objects and abject, emasculated subjects. The study draws upon Fred Botting’s contention that gothic extremes are a reaction to the “framework” of “reductive and normalising limits of bourgeois morality and modes of production” (89). -
Johann Zoffany, Classical Art, Italy and Russian Patronage: Shedding New Light on Models, Men and Paintings
664 Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari УДК 7.034(410.1)8 ББК 85.03 DOI:10.18688/aa155-7-72 Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari Johann Zoffany, Classical Art, Italy and Russian Patronage: Shedding New Light on Models, Men and Paintings Antiquity was the great theme in European art and culture in the second half of the 18th century. Johann Zoffany’s (1733–1810) famous painting of theTribuna of the Uffizi (Royal Collections, UK, Ill. 112) made in Florence between 1772 and 1777, does not portray that room as it was, but sums up a number of classical models of paramount importance in the artistic and social education of any well-bred eighteenth-century European. The astonishing concentration of masterpieces in the Tribuna was a sum of the ideas of beauty selected from antiquity and the Renaissance, even if, considering the first, Rome was undoubtedly the place to go to discover and experience the antique in eighteenth-century Europe. Zoffany himself had discovered classical heritage while living in Rome, from 1750 to 1757 and being a pupil of Anton Raphael Mengs who was, together with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the main testimonial of antiquity’s values and models. It was in Rome that Zoffany approached the composite community of Grand Tourists who probably showed him how much England was becoming the center of modern Europe and contributed to his decision to move there [8, p. 18] 1. Zoffany’s Classical education is very well shown by a painting he executed in 1753 — in Rome, or perhaps the reason for a short return to Germany — I’m pointing to the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (Regensburg, Museen der Stadt) [14, p. -
Redefining British Aestheticism: Elitism, Readerships and the Social Utility of Art
Redefining British Aestheticism: Elitism, Readerships and the Social Utility of Art Sarah Ruth Townley , MRes Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2012 ii —COTETS— Abstract .............................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. vi List of Illustrations ............................................................................................ vii Introduction Aestheticism’s Membership, Literary Criticism and the Social Utility of Art .................................................................... 1 Overview ...................................................................................... 2 i. Aestheticism and the Marketplace ..................................... 13 ii. Aestheticism, Gender and Sexuality .................................. 25 iii. Aestheticism and the ‘Return to Form’ .............................. 38 iv. New Formalism and Redefining Aestheticism ................... 49 Chapter One 'Admitted to the concert of literature': Aestheticism and Readerships .............................................................................. 54 1.1 ‘The central need of a select few’: Elite Readers, Style and Paterian Individualism ..................... 60 1.2 A ‘human complication and a social stumbling-block’: Henry James, Literary Value and the ‘Democratization’ of Aestheticism ......................................................................... -
Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-De-Siècle Vampire “Olalla” (1885) As ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’ Angelo Riccioni Università Degli Studi Di Napoli Parthenope, Italia
e-ISSN 2420-823X English Literature Vol. 7 – December 2020 Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-de-Siècle Vampire “Olalla” (1885) as ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’ Angelo Riccioni Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, Italia Abstract “Olalla” (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson has usually been neglected by critics interested in late-Victorian culture. Preceding of just a few weeks the publica- tion of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), this novella has been judged as a derivative work, a story whose interest lies in its different sources, ranging from Edward Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story to E.A. Poe’s tales. My analysis aims to prove that in writing this work, Stevenson is probably drawing inspiration from the imagery exploited by some members of the Aesthetic Movement, among them Walter Pater and Edward Burne-Jones. Keywords Robert Louis Stevenson. Olalla. Aesthetic culture. The ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’. Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 “Olalla” and Aesthetic Culture. – 3 “Olalla” and the ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’. – 4 Conclusion. Peer review Submitted 2020-11-06 Edizioni Accepted 2020-12-12 Ca’Foscari Published 2020-12-21 Open access © 2020 | cb Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License Citation Riccioni, A. (2020). “Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-de-Siècle Vampire. “Olalla” (1885) as ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’”. English Literature, 7, 91-108. DOI 10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2021/01/004 91 Angelo Riccioni Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-de-Siècle Vampire. “Olalla” (1885) as ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’ 1 Introduction Usually regarded as a vampire story set in nineteenth-century Spain, “Olalla” (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson has often been neglected by critics interested in late-Victorian culture. -
Vernon Lee (14 October 1856–13 February 1935) Diane Apostolos-Cappadona
Vernon Lee (14 October 1856–13 February 1935) Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Cosmopolitan intellectual Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget) (Fig. 1) was the author of over forty volumes including supernatural fiction, music criticism, travel writing, and a large body of essays on aesthetics and art appreciation. Born in France to British parents, Lee visited London often while spending the majority of her life on the Continent, particularly in Italy. She developed long-lasting friendships with artists and writers among both expatriates and Italians in Florence, where she was a close neighbour of the Berensons. She also fell out with some of her friends and acquaint- ances, including Bernard Berenson, who unjustly accused her of plagia- rism. Her 1884 roman-à-clef Miss Brown alienated some of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood it satirized. Her volumes Euphorion (1884) and Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895) positioned her, along with Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds, as an authority on the Italian Renaissance. A gifted linguist with interests in psychology, she was instrumental in the introduction of the German concept of Einfühlung (empathy) into the study of aesthetics Fig. 1: Vernon Lee at Il Palmerino in 1914, photograph. Courtesy of the Vernon Lee Archives, Special Collections, Colby College, Waterville, ME. 2 in the English-speaking world. With the artist Clementina Anstruther- Thomson, one of several women to whom she was passionately attached over the course of her life, Lee developed a theory of psychological aesthet- ics. Together they wrote Beauty and Ugliness (1912) and The Beautiful (1913), which engaged with the work of William James and European psycholo- gists such as Théodule Ribot, Theodor Lipps, and Karl Groos, but was based on their own highly individual experimentation in galleries. -
Istruzioni Per Gli Autori
VIII Congresso Nazionale di Archeometria Scienze e Beni Culturali: stato dell’arte e prospettive Bologna 5 - 7 Febbraio 2014 MARBLE SCULPTURES IN THE TRIBUNA OF UFFIZI GALLERY 1* 1, 2 3 S. Bracci , E. Cantisani D. Attanasio , F. Paolucci 1Istituto per la Conservazione e Valorizzazione dei Beni Culturali-CNR, Sesto Fiorentino (FI), [email protected] 2Istituto di Struttura della Materia-CNR, Monterotondo Staz., Roma 3 Galleria degli Uffizi, Dipartimento di antichità classica In the framework of the restoration project of Tribuna in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (Italy), started 2010 and completed in the 2012, integrated studies for the analysis of the materials of the five marble sculptures were performed. The objectives were the assessment of the state of conservation, identification of materials due to past interventions and the provenance of marbles. The five sculptures in the Tribuna were: the Venere Medici (inv. 224), the Medici Apollo, so-called Apollino (inv. 229), the Arrotino or Scythian knife-grinder ( inv. 230), the Satiro danzante (inv. 220) and the Lottatori or Wrestlers group, (inv. 216) (Fig.1). The Tribuna of the Uffizi was built in 1587 by Bernardo Buontalenti to celebrate the varied interests of collectors of Francesco I (1541-1587), eclectic and whimsical prince of the Medici family. The five sculptures have a complex archaeological and antiquarian history. They are probably high quality Roman copies of original Greek ones; they were discovered in different archaeological excavations arriving in the collection in -
Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Female Subject in the Nineteenth Century
VERNON LEE: AESTHETICS, HISTORY, AND THE FEMALE SUBJECT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY By CHRISTA ZORN-BELDE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1994 ‘i.’i S3favyan vaiHOU jo xiisajAiNn ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dan Cottom, Elizabeth Langland, Chris Snodgrass, and Helga Kraft for their continuous help and support for this dissertation while in the middle of their own work. I would especially like to thank my director, Alistair Duckworth, for his knowledgeable advice and unfailing kind encouragement. I also owe a great debt of thanks to the Interlibrary Loan staff of the University of Florida, and to the librarian of the Special Collections of the Miller Library at Colby College, Mrs. Patience-Anne W. Lenk. IX TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENT iii ABSTRACT v CHAPTERS 1 WRITING BETWEEN GENDER LINES: VERNON LEE'S DEVELOPMENT OF LESBIAN SUBJECTIVITY 1 How Can We Read Vernon Lee Today? 1 Biographical Notes 9 Vernon Lee in Literary Criticism 14 Gender and Genre: the Dilemma of the Female Voice 25 Vernon Lee: A Lesbian Feminist? 55 Lesbian Subjectivity: From Baldwin to Althea 68 Notes 94 2 THE FEMALE VOICE OF HISTORY 109 Renaissance "Dress" and Female Subject 109 Historical Intertextuality : Lee and Pater 119 Lee's "New Historicism" 162 Notes 166 3 MISS BROWN: AN AESTHETIC BILDUNGSROMAN? 171 Vernon Lee Between Biography and Aestheticism.... 171 -
'Determined to Be Weird': British Weird Fiction Before Weird Tales
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Birkbeck, University of London ‘Determined to be Weird’: British Weird Fiction before Weird Tales James Fabian Machin Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2016 1 Declaration I, James Fabian Machin, declare that this thesis is all my own work. Signature_______________________________________ Date____________________ 2 Abstract Weird fiction is a mode in the Gothic lineage, cognate with horror, particularly associated with the early twentieth-century pulp writing of H. P. Lovecraft and others for Weird Tales magazine. However, the roots of the weird lie earlier and late-Victorian British and Edwardian writers such as Arthur Machen, Count Stenbock, M. P. Shiel, and John Buchan created varyingly influential iterations of the mode. This thesis is predicated on an argument that Lovecraft’s recent rehabilitation into the western canon, together with his ongoing and arguably ever-increasing impact on popular culture, demands an examination of the earlier weird fiction that fed into and resulted in Lovecraft’s work. Although there is a focus on the literary fields of the fin de siècle and early twentieth century, by tracking the mutable reputations and critical regard of these early exponents of weird fiction, this thesis engages with broader contextual questions of cultural value and distinction; of notions of elitism and popularity, tensions between genre and literary fiction, and the high/low cultural divide allegedly precipitated by Modernism. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 5 Introduction .................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 1: The Wyrd, the Weird-like, and the Weird .............................. -
Issue No. 13-August 2012 CLANGOUR of “BATTLE”
Issue no. 13-August 2012 CLANGOUR OF “BATTLE” Paolo Uccello’s celebrated painting emerges from restoration with heightened forcefulness and serves as the true apotheosis of Renaissance perspectival vision, as the fitting conclusion to the “Bagliori Dorati” exhibit The high point and, at least symbolically, the concluding work of the “Bagliori dorati” exhibit is the restored Battle of San Romano that Paolo Uccello painted ca. 1440. In this painting the painstakingly drafted and “flash-frozen” vision in perspective brings together and organizes the chaos, the deafening clamor, the crush and metallic clashing of the chivalric dream at its most extreme. The masterful restoration confirmed the vicissitudes experienced by the panel, which Lorenzo the Magnificent obtained (along with the two others) after putting heavy pressure on its owners, the Bartolini Salimbeni; he then put all three on display in his room in the Palazzo Medici, adapting their shape with cuts and additions. Two armies gleaming in silver and gold; their massive mounts; sweet landscapes barely disturbed by the soldiers’ passage; chain mail and horses’ manes: nothing escapes the painter’s eye in this perspective Renaissance vision. An abridgement of the article “Clamore di “Battaglia”” by Cristina Acidini – Il Giornale degli Uffizi no. 54, August 2012. The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello after restoration Issue no. 13-August 2012 THE SHELL-STUDDED FIRMAMENT Work ends on the Tribuna of the Uffizi Gallery, designed by Buontalenti for Francesco I. The Grand Duke’s dream is the focus of an “epoch-making” restoration project. 6,000 shell valves inlaid in the vermilion dome. -
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) Letters Home”
List of “Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) Letters Home” Thanks him for a "swet broch" he had given her; includes watercolor of Eugene labeled January 1, Violet Paget to Eugene Lee- "The pride of Oxford and Oriel." [Includes 1 1866 Hamilton (Oxford, England) separate watercolor drawing.] Sends him birthday greetings; tells of trip to see the opera "Doiw Roffiloim now January 6, Violet Paget to Eugene Lee- Lanjuman." [Includes separate watercolor 2 1866 Hamilton (Oxford, England) drawing.] Violet Paget (Baden-Baden, Has two teachers now, one for German and November Germany) to Eugene Lee-Hamilton arithmetic, the other for French; mother has 3 28, 1866 (Oxford, England) given her book by "le chainsin shmit." Violet Paget (Baden-Baden, Thanks him for stamps he sent her; asks for March 3, Germany) to Eugene Lee-Hamilton more stamps and arms of Oxford and 4 1866 (Oxford, England) Cambridge Violet Paget (Baden-Baden, Acknowledges receipt of his letter; describes Germany) to Eugene Lee-Hamilton her birthday gifts. Enclosure reads: "Mamma 5 no date, 1866 (Oxford, England) and Baby to the Bruder." Violet Paget (Baden-Baden, Germany) to Eugene Lee-Hamilton "Old Flower" (?) fled to France, having 6 no date, 1866 (Oxford, England) pawned his silver for 900 francs. Her cousins and Mary Trump called; description of Mrs. Jenkin's house, appearance and Mrs. Jenkin's theory that "No one can be happy. That when anyone attains to perfect happiness he necessarily dies"; Mrs. Jenkins Violet Paget (Paris, France) to Henry advising on composition and French lessons; 7 June 16, 1870 Paget VP reading "Sixte Quinte" by Baron Hubner. -
Late Victorian Gothic Tales
OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS LATE VICTORIAN GOTHIC TALES THE late-Victorian Gothic was a revival of the Gothic form that in a few short years produced some of the most enduring characters of the genre: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray (1891), H. G. Wells’s Dr Moreau (1896), and Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (1897). The Gothic seemed to regain its cultural significance as a popular literary mode, providing a means to explore the rapid social, political, scientific, and technological transformations that shook the late-Victorian era. The revival was also the product of an explosion of new magazines and journals in the 1880s and 1890s, and this anthology brings together short stories by a combination of well-known figures like Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Rudyard Kipling with writers who contributed notably nasty tales to the revival: Arthur Machen, M. P. Shiel, B. M. Croker, and Grant Allen. This selection shows the diversity of form and style within the late-Victorian Gothic. ROGER LUCKHURST is the author of The Invention of Telepathy (2002) and Science Fiction (2005) and co-editor of The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c.1880–1900 (2000). OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles––from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels––the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. -
Scrittrice “Inglese Di Nazionalità" “Italiana Per Scelta”
R EALITY Vernon Lee Scrittrice “inglese di nazionalità" “italiana per scelta” Massimo ernon Lee, pseudonimo della definisce la scrittrice una “miniera di del Diciottesimo Secolo in Italia). De Francesco scrittrice Violet Paget, nasce di idee”. A quest’ultimo la scrittrice È la prima letterata a introdurre il Vil 14 ottobre 1856 da fami- commissiona una rubrica chiamata concetto di Einfühlung, o Empatia glia inglese colta e cosmopolita a Letters from Italy (Lettere dall’Italia) (letteralmente Immedesimazione) Boulogne-sur-Mer nel dipartimento da pubblicare sulla rivista The Lon- nello studio dell’estetica nel mondo francese di Pas-de-Calais da Henry don Mercury. letterario anglofono. Belcaro, sag- Ferguson Paget e Matilda Lee-Ha- In Italia i Paget si spostano frequen- gi su diverse questioni di estetica milton. È sorellastra del poeta tardo temente e nel 1873 si stabiliscono a pubblicato nel 1881, è una delle sue vittoriano Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Firenze, dove la scrittrice trascorre- opere più significative riguardanti nato dal primo matrimonio della rà il resto della sua vita. Nel 1878, l’estetica, oltre a essere un’auto- madre. Definitasi “inglese di na- al fine di “essere considerata seria- rità in materia di Rinascimento, di zionalità” e “francese per caso”, mente dal pubblico”, Violet inizia cui dà prova per mezzo delle ope- Vernon è “italiana per scelta”, in a scrivere sotto il nom de plume re Euphorion, pubblicato nel 1884, quanto trascorre più di mezzo se- maschile di Vernon Lee. Poliglotta e Passioni e Studi sul Rinascimento colo nel Bel Paese. Qui forgia ami- sin da bambina, condivide il suo del 1895.