Synopses & Reviews
The fabled cities of Italy--Florence, Venice, and Rome--have each acquired a distinctive tradition of literary representation involving characteristic, recurrent motifs and symbolic signatures. A wealth of writing on each is examined in fiction and poetry of nineteenth and twentieth-century authors. The analysis points to Florence frequently being depicted in terms of binary oppositions, such as past versus present, stasis versus movement, and light versus darkness. Venetian narratives commonly are infused with motifs relating to dream and unreality, obsession, voyeurism, isolation, melancholia, and death. History, combined with the motif of change, is a controlling metaphor for Roman fiction and poetry. In a wider theoretical framework, this writing is analyzed for the light shed on the issue of the significance of setting in literature.
Synopsis
The fabled cities of Italy--Florence, Venice, and Rome--have each acquired a distinctive tradition of literary representation involving characteristic, recurrent motifs and symbolic signatures. A wealth of writing on each is examined in fiction and poetry of nineteenth and twentieth-century authors. The analysis points to Florence frequently being depicted in terms of binary oppositions, such as past versus present, stasis versus movement, and light versus darkness. Venetian narratives commonly are infused with motifs relating to dream and unreality, obsession, voyeurism, isolation, melancholia, and death. History, combined with the motif of change, is a controlling metaphor for Roman fiction and poetry. In a wider theoretical framework, this writing is analyzed for the light shed on the issue of the significance of setting in literature.
Synopsis
Literature set in these cities is examined for recurrent motifs and the significance of setting.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [291]-299) and index.
About the Author
MICHAEL L. ROSS is Associate Professor of English at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Table of Contents
Introduction: A Tale of Three Cities
Florence
The Etrurian Athens
Robert Browning's Dialectical City
A Blind Worship of Clashing Deities: Romola Agonistes
Madonnas of the Past and Future: Howells and James
A Room with a View: A Sense of Deities Reconciled
The Extreme South of the Lily's Flowering: Aaron's Rod
A Great Tradition Travestied: Fidelman in Florence
Venice
This Most Improbable of Cities
"The Fair Frailty": Prison and Abyss
Henry James's Venetian Curiosity-Shop
L.P. Hartley's Islands of Identity
Glass Menageries: The Venice of Hecht and Malamud
Rome
City of the Soul
Juxtaposition: Browning and Clough
Pearls and Carbuncles: The Marble Faun
A Large Capacity for Ruin: Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady
Brief Roman Candles: Wharton, Huxley and Malamud
Story's End
Works Cited