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Seminar:
Anatomies
of desire
(Spring Term)
Teacher: Dr Novella Mercuri
Description:
This seminar will look at three very different historical novels
in which three contemporary women authors from different cultural
traditions
recreate the
lives of women who lived centuries ago. The starting point for these imaginative
reconstructions are art masterpieces - Vermeer's and Gentileschi's paintings
and Mantegna's fresco ‘La
Camera degli Sposi’ (slides of these and other visual material will be
shown). All three books recreate the time and setting of these lives with wonderful
richness. All three are reflections on thwarted lives of women, severely limited
and constricted regardless of the differences in time and place and social condition,
and on the measure of fulfillment these female characters manage to obtain nevertheless.
We shall look at these texts not only from a thematic but also from a narratological
perspective (narrative voice, point of view, narrative levels) and reflect on
the extent to which the conscious choice of tools made by the author contributes
to the distinctive nature of each work, to the telling of the story and to the
effectiveness of the female portrait.
Required reading:
Anna Banti, Artemisia, trans. by Shirley D’Ardia Caracciolo, Univ. of Nebraska
Press, 1988 (rep. Serpent’s Tail, 1995, 2004)
Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Harper Collins, 1999 (paperback
2000)
Marie Ferranti, The Princess of Mantua, trans. by Andrew Brown, Hesperus Press,
2005
Required viewing:
'Artemisia', dir. Agnes Merlet (France, 1998) (Week 8)
'Girl with a Pearl Earring', dir. Peter Webber (USA/Luxembourg, 2003)
(Week 10)
Session 1 Introduction: Art fiction
Session 2 Ferranti (The Court of Mantua
and Mantegna)
Session 3 Ferranti (Historical and
fictional characters)
Session 4
Ferranti (Writing ‘docufiction’)
Session 5 Banti (Caravaggismo and
the Gentileschis)
READING WEEK
Session 6 Banti (Text
analysis)
Session 7 Banti (Story and history)
Session 8 Chevalier (Dutch painting and Vermeer)
Session 9 Chevalier (Female characters)
Session 10 Chevalier
(Narrative)
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