Manfred Pfister

Manfred Pfister's book is the first to provide a coherent comprehensive framework for the analysis of plays in all their dramatic and theatrical dimensions. The material on which his analysis is based covers all genres and periods. His approach is systematic rather than historical, combining more abstract categorisations with detailed interpretations of sample texts.

The Theory and Analysis of Drama

David Gallagher

A collection of essays that examines the dynamics of comedy, jokes and laughter. It utilizes theories from early writings of antiquity to contemporary modern-day fiction.

Essays on Dante, Hoffman, Nietzsche, Wharton, Borges, and Cabrera Infante

Comedy in Comparative Literature

This is the first anthology of British travel writing on Italy which traces the development of the genre and the history of the British perception of Italy from the Renaissance to the present. As an anthologie raissonn�eit presents the texts in thematic clusters and chronological order, providing commentary and annotations for each of them and their nearly hundred authors (some of them, like Smollett, Byron, Dickens or Huxley, well-known, others virtually unknown, amongst them many unduly neglected women writers). Further features are a substantial introduction to the travelogue and the writing of Italy, more than thirty illustrations visualizing the British experience of Italy, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

The Italies of British Travellers : an Annotated Anthology

The Fatal Gift of Beauty

Ekkehard König

Literary Analysis and Linguistics

Despite the immense popularity of Laurence Sterne's work during his lifetime, his contribution to the novel form and experimentalism has only been acknowledged since his death. His contemporaries Richardson and Goldsmith denounced his archaic methods and took offence at his playful irreverence but his oddity is never accidental nor perverse; it is the strategy of an inventive, thoughtful, comic talent. Tristram Shandy, perhaps his best loved work, defies convention at every turn, distributing narrative content across a bafflingly idiosyncratic time-scheme interrupted by digressions, authorial comments and interferences with the printed fabric of the book. This comically fragmented storyline is a reaction against the linear narratives of Fielding and Richardson; aiming instead at a realistic impressionism, a shape determined by the association of ideas. This study reads Sterne's work in the light of modern literary theory as befits an artist before his time.

Laurence Sterne

Barbara Schaff

Half a millennium of English and American fantasies of Venice: this collection of essays by leading critics in the field explores the continued and continuing fascination of travellers, writers, artists, theatre workers and film makers with the amphibious and ambiguous city in the lagoon. There is hardly another place in Europe that has become so much of a palimpsest, inscribed with the fantasies, the dreams and nightmares of generations of foreigners, and this turns Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds into a particularly pertinent case study of the ways cultural difference within Europe is experienced, enacted and constructed. The essays range across five centuries - from the Renaissance to our postmodern present, from Shakespeare and his contemporary Coryate to recent novels, detective fiction and films - and, in contrast to previous studies focussing on the Grand Tour, they emphasise more recent developments and how they continue or disrupt traditional ways of perceiving - or being blind to! - Venice.

English Fantasies of Venice

Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds

Ralf Hertel

National identity is not some naturally given or metaphysically sanctioned racial or territorial essence that only needs to be conceptualised or spelt out in discursive texts; it emerges from, takes shape in, and is constantly defined and redefined in individual and collective performances. It is in performances'ranging from the scenarios of everyday interactions to `cultural performances? such as pageants, festivals, political manifestations or sports, to the artistic performances of music, dance, theatre, literature, the visual and culinary arts and more recent media'that cultural identity and a sense of nationhood are fashioned. National identity is not an essence one is born with but something acquired in and through performances.Particularly important here are intercultural performances and transactions, and that not only in a colonial and postcolonial dimension, where such performative aspects have already been considered, but also in inner-European transactions. `Englishness? or `Britishness? and Italianita, the subject of this anthology, are staged both within each culture and, more importantly, in joint performances of difference across cultural borders. Performing difference highlights differences that `make a difference?; it `draws a line? between self and other'boundary lines that are, however, constantly being redrawn and renegotiated, and remain instable and shifting.ContentsManfred PFISTER: Introduction: Performing National Identity1. Early Modern Literary ExchangesWerner VON KOPPENFELS: `Stripping up his sleeves like some juggler?: Giordano Brunoin England, or, The Philosopher as Stylistic Mountebank Ralf HERTEL: `Mine Italian brain ?gan in your duller Britain operate most vilely?: Cymbeline and the Deconstruction of Anglo-Italian Differences 2. Italian and English Art in DialogueJohn PEACOCK: Inigo Jones and the Reform of Italian Art Alison YARRINGTON: `Made in Italy?: Sculpture and the Staging of National Identities at the International Exhibition of 1862 3. Travelling ImagesBarbara SCHAFF: Italianised Byron ? Byronised Italy Fabienne MOINE: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Italian Poetry: Constructing National Identity and Shaping the Poetic Self Stephen GUNDLE: The `Bella Italiana? and the `English Rose?: Reflections on Two National Typologies of Feminine Beauty 4. Political NegotiationsPamela NEVILLE-SINGTON: Sex, Lies, and Celluloid: That Hamilton Woman and British Attitudes towards the Italians from the Risorgimento to the Second World War Peter VASSALLO: Italian Culture versus British Pragmatics: The Maltese Scenario David FORGACS: Gramsci's Notion of the `Popular? in Italy and Britain: A Tale of Two Cultures 179Carla DENTE: Personal Memory / Cultural Memory: Identity and Difference in Scottish-Italian Migrant Theatre5. Contemporary MediationsClaudio VISENTIN: The Theatre of the World: British-Italian Identities on the Tourism Stage Judith MUNAT: Bias and Stereotypes in the Media: The Performance of British and Italian National Identities Sara SONCINI: Re-locating Shakespeare: Cultural Negotiations in Italian Dubbed Versions of Romeo and JulietMariangela TEMPERA: Something to Declare: Italian Avengers and British Culture in La ragazza con la pistola and Appuntamento a Liverpool Anthony KING: English Fans and Italian Football: Towards a Transnational Relationship Greg WALKER: Selling England (and Italy) by the Pound: Performing National Identity in the First Phase of Progressive Rock: Jethro Tull, King Crimson, and PFM Gisela ECKER: Zuppa Inglese and Eating up Italy: Intercultural Feasts and Fantasies Notes on Contributors

Manfred Pfister

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