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Drawing on a long-standing tradition of fictional images, British writers of the Romantic period defined and constructed Italy as a land that naturally invites inscription and description. In their works, Italy is a cultural geography so heavily overwritten with discourse that it becomes the natural recipient of further fictional transformations. If critics have frequently attended to this figurative complex and its related Italophilia, what seems to have been left relatively unexplored is the fact that these representations were paralleled and sustained by intense scholarly activities. This volume specifically addresses Romantic-period scholarship about Italian literature, history, and culture under the interconnected rubrics of ‘translating’, ‘reviewing’, and ‘rewriting’. The essays in this book consider this rich field of scholarly activity in order to redraw its contours and examine its connections with the fictional images of Italy and the general fascination with this land and its civilization that are a crucial component of British culture between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Contents Laura BANDIERA and Diego SAGLIA: Introduction: ‘Home of the Arts! Land of the Lyre!’: Scholarly Approaches and Fictional Myths of Italian Culture in British Romanticism Setting the Scene: Literary and Cultural Intersections William SPAGGIARI: The Canon of the Classics: Italian Writers and Romantic-Period Anthologies of Italian Literature in Britain Gian Mario ANSELMI: Shelley and the Italian Lyrical Tradition Building the Past: Re-Approaching the Italian Literary Heritage Carla Maria GNAPPI: The Sunflower and the Rose: Notes Towards a Reassessment of Blake’s Illustrations of Dante Maria Cristina CIGNATTA: William Hazlitt and Dante as the Embodiment of ‘Power, Passion, Self-Will’ Silvia BORDONI: ‘The Sonnet’s Claim’: Petrarch and the Romantic Sonnet Luca MANINI: Charlotte Smith and the Voice of Petrarch Edoardo ZUCCATO: Writing Petrarch’s Biography: From Susanna Dobson (1775) to Alexander Fraser Tytler (1810) Laura BANDIERA: Wordsworth’s Ariosto: Translation as Metatext and Misreading Looking at Contemporary Italy: Mapping the Present Lilla Maria CRISAFULLI: Theatre and Theatricality in British Romantic Constructions of Italy Gioia ANGELETTI: ‘I Feel the Improvisatore’: Byron, Improvisation, and Romantic Poetics Serena BAIESI: The Influence of the Italian Improvvisatrici on British Romantic Women Writers: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s Response Mauro PALA: Facets of the Risorgimento: The Debate on the Classical Heritage from Byron’s Childe Harold to Leopardi’s Canzone ad Angelo Mai Cecilia PIETROPOLI: The Tale of the Two Foscaris from the Chronicles to the Historical Drama: Mary Mitford’s Foscari and Lord Byron’s The Two Foscari Lia GUERRA: Mary Shelley’s Contributions to Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia: Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy Diego SAGLIA: ‘Freedom alone is wanting’: British Views of Contemporary Italian Drama, 1820-1830 Caroline FRANKLIN: Cosmopolitanism and Catholic Culture: Byron, Italian Poetry, and The Liberal Index
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TEXTXET Studies in Comparative Literature 49 Series Editors C.C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen This page intentionally left blank Re-imagining Language and Literature for the 21st Century Selected Proceedings of the XXII International Congress of FILLM held at Assumption University, Bangkok, Thailand from 19-23 August 2002 Edited by Suthira Duangsamosorn (et al.) Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence’. ISBN 90-420-1637-X © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in The Netherlands Table of Contents Introduction