By David Gibbons The early English translations of Alessandro Manzoni’s historical novel I promessi sposi are in many ways an object lesson in how not to do things. The six versions published between 1828 and 1845 are valiant attempts, but all of them include some pretty major clangers. Based on years spent […]
This is the second article in our occasional series, ‘Five Reasons’, in which we take a neglected figure from literary history and endeavour to unearth five interesting or surprising things about them. In our first piece, we took the Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith as our subject. This time, […]
By Patrick Smith, Bainbridge State College, Georgia Writers have drawn on vivid descriptions of the visual arts to enhance their work since Homer famously used 130 lines to describe the chronicle emblazoned on Achilles’s shield in Book 18 of Homer’s Iliad more than 2,500 years ago. Ekphrasis—the representation in language […]
The great American wit and man of letters, H. L. Mencken, memorably described the martini as ‘the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet’. If the sonnet was the pinnacle of European cultural achievement, then the martini was the transatlantic equivalent. This is by no means the only literary […]
By Professor Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter Note: This paper was presented at the State of the Field Plenary panel that opened the joint AVSA/BAVS/NAVSA (Australasian Victorian Studies Association; British Association for Victorian Studies; North American Victorian Studies Association) international conference ‘The Global and the Local’ at the Ca’Foscari University […]