Papers by Francesca D'Alfonso
Forum Italicum, Oct 9, 2022
My essay intends to demonstrate the significance of the Abruzzi region in Edward Lear's artis... more My essay intends to demonstrate the significance of the Abruzzi region in Edward Lear's artistic vision. In particular, it aims to show that, in a certain sense, two contrasting personalities coexisted in Lear, and determined his attitude towards the many places he visited in his horseback excursions of the Abruzzi, a region quite far from the main routes of the Grand Tour. On the one hand, Lear was greatly inspired and fascinated by the landscapes he had the opportunity to admire almost everywhere in the Abruzzi and, as a landscape painter, he responded to this visual experience enthusiastically. On the other hand, as a British traveller, he was shocked to see that the notables he met in Chieti, Villalago, Sulmona and Città Sant’Angelo, lived in old, dilapidated houses with terrible hygienic conditions and pervasive uncleanliness. In this respect, Lear’s attitude seems to oscillate between that of an artist with a romantic view of people and cultures, and a pragmatic Briton who regards his country’s ways as a sort of model for the rest of the world.
This article analyses The Dying Animal by emphasising the central opposition between Eros and Tha... more This article analyses The Dying Animal by emphasising the central opposition between Eros and Thanatos, as well as examining the intertextual elements that direct the author’s creative process. In this novel, more than any other of his works, Philip Roth makes use of literary and pictorial references to create an intense and constantly lively dialogism. The importance of these references for the textual organisation of the novel lies in the fact that every writer or artist mentioned has a functional bearing on its narrative structures and themes. Consequently, the paradigm of mortality (Yeats, Kafka, ecc.) is connected to the subject of the nude and flesh in painting. (Modigliani, Spencer, ecc.) which are seen as a metamorphosis that leads to death. In the end, the awareness of human finitude becomes the lesson which the main protagonist, David Kepesh, will learn from the great masters of literature and art.
Pólemos, 2019
Starting from an analysis of realism as expressed by George Eliot in Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, thi... more Starting from an analysis of realism as expressed by George Eliot in Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, this paper intends to investigate the way in which law is enforced in a case of infanticide. In particular, in Eliot’s novel the crime is committed by the beautiful and naive Hetty Sorrel whose tragic destiny is a consequence of her seduction by the aristocratic Arthur Donnithorne. Hence her condition of a fallen woman and, accordingly, the trial culminating in the sentencing to hanging. Significantly, Hetty’s silence before the jury in the courtroom is interrupted thanks to the intervention of Dinah Morris, her Methodist cousin who, meeting the prisoner in solidarity and sympathy, will have from her a full confession of the events.
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Papers by Francesca D'Alfonso
in MEROPE. Rivista semestrale di studi umanistici
ANNO XXVII - N. 67-68 - Gennaio-Luglio 2018 - nuova serie.