This research presents a synchronic and a diachronic investigation of six Italian translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice) across a century (1872-1988). This work draws on Antoine Berman's method for the analysis of literary translations and integrates it with interdisciplinary theoretical approaches focused on the investigation of children's literature in translation. The premises of children's literature studies, translation studies, and retranslation studies underpin the analytical framework that supports the textual analysis. The examination focuses in particular on the translation strategies used to convey in Italian the culture-specific references that contribute to fashion the identity of Alice and her Wonderland. The research operates on two different levels. Firstly, it presents a synchronic investigation concerned with a close reading and analysis of each translation in linguistic and textual terms. The elements examined in the detailed survey offer the opportunity to retrace the translators' unique understanding of Alice and discuss how it was conveyed to the Italian readers. Secondly, it proposes a diachronic investigation comparing, from a chronological perspective, the translation solutions previously identified and examines how the concepts of the image of the child and dual readership have evolved in the Italian translations. The purpose of the study is to investigate the translation strategies to convey Alice in Italian, observe the patterns that emerge from the analysis of the texts and advance explanatory hypotheses that would account for the changes in the translators' understanding of Carroll's novel over time. The close reading the research centres on aims to provide a meticulous collection of the translation solutions found in the texts; these are not confined to particular passages of the book but are found throughout it, thus offering support for future analysis on the translations of Alice. Finally, this research also aims to contribute to the analysis of children's literature in translation by providing an analytical framework able to support the investigation of different aspects of books for children in translation in other languages other than Italian.

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Three of the most notable English women authors, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot, explore similar themes of the individual, particularly the young woman, in relation to a hierarchical, patriarchal society, more specifically a crumbling paternalist society. My focus is on three Victorian novels' representations of society's transformation from a paternalistic nature to one of greater individualism; and in particular, I explore how women defined for themselves positions of power within these structures. So this study is twofold, one on representations of gender and the other of class; for the two are inseparable in discussing power relationships of Victorian women. Austen, Bronte, and Eliot understood and, to some degree, accepted the pervasive paternal values. Their novels, however, do not advocate radical social change; rather, their heroines willingly turn to domesticity. I aim to argue that each author, although dissatisfied with aspects of society, did not desire to radically alter women's role within society. The fictitious lives they created became both a representation and a critique of the ideologies surrounding them. The texts of Emma, Jane Eyre, and Middlemarch are representative of traditional social norms and yet question some of the culture's dominant codes, especially in relation to paternalism and gender. What strikes me about these novels is that although the female characters are limited by society, they are not ineffectual. Rather the authors portray women in control of their lives and able to make choices for themselves within the framework of society. My research includes social, philosophical, and political attitudes of the decades in which each novel was written, as well as personal philosophies held by Austen, Bronte, and Eliot in relation to gender and class and the influence of these philosophies in their art. Finally, my reading of the texts explicates evidences of the culture's and author's attitudes in relation to paternalism and gender.

The plot twist is a complex narrative surprise in which a revelation retroactively transforms readers’ understanding of the preceding events. Readers discover belatedly that the situation depicted in the narrative had all along been quite different from what they thought. Although the term “plot twist” was first used in the early twentieth century, many of the best-known works of fiction of the nineteenth century were revealed, in retrospect, to be twist narratives. This dissertation studies twist narratives and their readers in the period before the plot twist became a known device. Through case studies of Jane Austen’s Emma, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” and Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the chapters investigate what kinds of knowledge-making practices readers engage in during first-time readings and rereadings of twist narratives, as well as before and after reading. Across these chapters I make the case that twist narratives demonstrate the crucial and interconnected roles of knowledge and temporality in any narrative experience. What we know, and when, and especially what we don’t (yet) know, is crucial to how narratives work and why we enjoy them.

Emil Behnke was a highly esteemed vocal pedagogue of the late nineteenth century. Perhaps rare for the time, the art and science of teaching vocal methods of speech and singing was a Behnke family business, one that Emil shared with his wife and daughter, who were both named Kate. Indeed, Emil's daughter, Kate Emil Behnke, was equally regarded and valued in the field of vocal pedagogy, carrying her father's teachings into the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the elder Kate Behnke, wife to Emil and mother to Kate Emil, was responsible for administering and building upon her husband's innovative methods of speech therapy, establishing her own reputation as a speech healer. The Behnke family published no less than fourteen books, cumulatively. Largely forgotten today, the purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive overview of the biography and the pedagogical methods and works of the Behnke family, and to contextualize these methods within the framework of trusted vocal pedagogy, both historic and current.