The thesis explores the diversity and experimentalism that typifies the narrative writings of the Scapigliatura. It offers a reading of key-texts by Rovani, Tarchetti and Dossi which focusses on the narrative techniques and structures which are used in the construction of meaning. Although critical attention addresses itself to the text and the narrative elements distinctive to it, it considers too the influence that context and circumstance exercise over the production of the work. The introduction looks at the particular problems that Italian Unification of 1861 with its accompanying political and cultural changes brought to the writer. This is followed by the body of the thesis which is made up of readings of specific texts. Chapters 2 and 3 study Tarchetti's and Rovani's very different attempts to produce committed, didactic writing with the instruments of popular fiction and the devices of the feuilleton. The 4th chapter discusses Dossi's semi-autobiographical fiction, L'altrieri and Vita di Alberto Pisani, in which although here too the narrator interpellates the reader through the medium of the text, empirical questions relating to the reading-public and the political climate no longer present themselves. The fragmentation of text and self that is witnessed in Dossi's writing returns as a theme in the discussion of Tarchetti's racconti fantastici in the last of the genre-related chapters. Here the function of the fantastic is examined together with the narratological elements of the genre. The last two chapters take up one aspect of this: the assault the fantastic makes on our sense of the integrity of character. The textual construction of character is discussed in relationship to Tarchetti's novel Fosca, where it is inscribed as an unstable, ambivalent category dependent on who is employing the linguistic register at any given time, and Dossi's misogynistic treatise La desinenza in 'A' which has to find the devices to construct and sustain a reductionist image of all women as Woman fixed in a few immutable traits.

Accounts of French medieval verse have always supposed that there was no readily identifiable general theory of poetry in the Middle Ages. At most, it is accepted that there were arts of versification (the Latin Poetrie of the XII/XIII centuries, the French Arts de Seconde Rhetorique of the XVth century), which covered points of grammar, rather than of "theory" as the term is usually understood. However, there were non-literary theories which were systematically used by certain medieval poets. They derived from Greco-Arabic, rather than Latin, learning. The most unstable of these were theories concerning the relationship of mind and body - in sleep, in semi-wakefulness and in melancholy. Encyclopedists and men of learning began to relate poetry to the sciences of the quadrivium in Late Antiquity (Augustine, Boethius). This tendency became increasingly clear in the XII/XIII centuries, at the same time as the diffusion of texts like the Avicenna Canon of Medicine and the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata. Jean de Meun was the first French author to relate the new sciences to poetic expression on an important scale. His discoveries were exploited by a number of poets in the XIV/XV centuries. The first major poets to use an art of poetry (that is, an ars poetica, rather than an ars versificatoria) and to apply its lessons to their work were Chastelain and Francois Villon. Their use of Averroes's commentary on Aristotle - the Poetria Aristotelis - has gone unnoticed. Towards the end of the fifteenth century French poetry evolved away from its interest in science in the direction of a number of ill-defined aims. Some of these were moralizing, others appear to be concerned with pure technique. Almost none of the poetry then written attempted to imitate the qualities of classical verse. It was concerned with problems of formal expression, rather than with exploring the structure of the mind or of the universe, as previously.

The thesis is a style-study of Le Lys dans la Vallee. Previous assessments of the novel's style have often been unfavourable. This derives at least in part from critics ' tendency to concentrate to on selected parts of the novel - whether to illustrate the Honore de Balzac-Felix de Vandenesse identification, or Balzac's supposedly flawed prose. The partiality of such approaches may be remedied by acknowledging the creative autonomy which Balzac has delegated to his 'creature', Felix de Vendenesse, and by seeing the novel as Felix's valiant bid for creativity, as Felix's coherent vision of his past and of the world. Balzac does, moreover, give Felix ample motivation for writing such a narrative. Although, then, an examination of the historical context in which le Lys was written confirms that many of its themes are cliches of the period, their combination, organisation, -and justification are unique. Felix's vision is epitomised in the way he establishes verbal links between experiences separated in time but related in intensity of feeling. The objects he describes are infused with his own subjective values, and become, therefore, what are called material images. These centre in groups on the four natural elements of earth, air (light and sound), fire and water, and on the various references to movement in the narrative. All these images and themes are then seen to converge on the plant, especially in the descriptions of the bouquets, which are thus at the centre of a network of correspondences whose source and brilliant internal justification are to be found in the description of Felix the poet-child-mystic. However brilliantly coherent, this vision is also the escapist fantasy of a child who never progresses from his adolescent fixations. Hence the importance of Natalie de Manerville's rejoinder. Hence, too, the originality of Balzac in composing a supremely coherent but at the same time supremely vitiated 'paradis imaginaire'.

The aim of this thesis is to further the inquiry into Flaubert's insights into language and their implications for the meaning of novels. In the perspective of assumptions underlying the eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century views of language, the novelist's own attitudes towards language are examined. Discussion of his early autobiographical works focuses ' particularly on the problem of inarticulacy and how it is ultimately objectified into a literary theme in the mature works. The thesis then considers the attractions and dangers which Flaubert recognises in accepting language as a means of ordering what is external to us. The problems inherent in the idealistic search to match experience and words derive in Flaubert's view from the inorganic nature of words themselves and from the idealist's unawareness of the distance between verbal reality and the world he inhabits. By contrast, the bourgeois response is to use language as a self-generating, stereotyped system. A discussion of the complex problem of Flaubert's use of speech in the novel shows the author to be subverting not only the conventions of literary speech, but also the possibility of communication between characters. The discussion of Bouvard et Pecuchet, in the perspective of Flaubert's mistrust of the significance of words, seeks to highlight his belief in the absurdity, of epistemological conceptualisation, in the last chapter, the subject of silence in the novels is considered: employed in an original way by Flaubert, it serves to illustrate the emptiness of human experience.

This thesis traces the history and development of the literary genre known as the satirical eulogy or paradoxical encomium, which flourished in France during the Renaissance. The first chapter investigates the origins of the genre and its widespread use in Greek and Latin literature. Particular attention is paid to Lucian, whose influence was important when the genre was revived. Between the end of antiquity and the fifteenth century there is virtually no trace of it, and so the next chapter passes straight to Erasmus' Moriae Encomium. A section on other, less famous Neo-Latin eulogies is followed by one on the various Italian manifestations of the genre. The second part of the thesis attempts to show how these diverse ingredients were combined in different ways at different stages to make the French satirical and ironical encomia. There had always been three main types of eulogy, each typified by one of Lucian's works. These categories were, broadly speaking, the praise of a vice, the praise of a disease or physical defect, and that of an unpleasant or insignificant animal or insect. French Renaissance eulogies also tended to fall into one of these categories and are therefore discussed in three groups. Of especial importance throughout are the numerous other literary forms, such as the 'blason' the 'hymne-blason', the epitaph and the paradox which modified and were modified by the classical genre. The conclusion suggests, tentatively, some of the reasons for what the thesis has shown to be a European, rather than a purely French phenomenon, the rise of a genre so popular as to appeal to writers of genius as dissimilar in temperament as Erasmus, Rabelais and Ronsard.

The aim of this study is to examine the life and work of Filippo de'Nerli and to see what this reveals about the politics society and historiography of his time. The first part of the study is biographical, tracing Nerli's involvement with politics and administration at various stages of his career. His period as governor of Modena is seen in the context of the war of the League of Cognac, the part which he played in cultural activities in Florence is considered, and in particular an attempt is made to analyse the changes which took place in the role of the Florentine ottimati in the mid sixteenth century as a result of the establishment of Medici absolutism. The second part of the study is devoted to an examination of Nerli's history of Florence. The sources of his work, its nature and the extent to which it served as a source for his contemporaries are considered and Nerli's relations with his fellow historians at Cosimo's court and in the Florentine Academy are discussed. Finally an attempt is made to reach certain tentative general conclusions about the nature and methods of historical writing in sixteenth century Florence. The aim throughout is to place Nerli in his correct context and this reveals him as a typical representative of his class who, for that reason, is a valuable subject for a study such as this.

This thesis examines the depiction of Fascism together with manifestations of dissent and anti-Fascism in the twentieth century Italian novel. The first chapter considers literary prefigurations of Fascism from 1890 onwards, including the treatment of the Superuomo by D'Annunzio, Papini, Marinetti and Soffici, and also the vulgarization of the Superuomo myth in Sarfatti's 'Dux', one of Mussolini's official biographies. Also mentioned are several accounts of the First World War which reveals social dissatisfactions that proved fertile soil for Fascist exploitation. The second chapter concentrates on a number of Fascist and pro-Fascist novels, that is novels written in homage to the regime and the bestsellers whose conservative values, and preoccupations with the nuclear family, coincide with the Fascist regime's domestic policies. The third chapter examines the covert expressions of disenchantment and dissent formulated against the regime; from the antipathy of Palazzeschi and Gadda to Moravia's dissection of middle-class vacuousness, and to the concern for the conditions of the peasants, the emergence of Neorealism and the importance of the influence of the American novel for disenchanted novelists. The fourth chapter compares and contrasts the works of Si lone and Ferrero, two novelists writing in exile, who denounced the injustices and hypocrisies of the regime's domestic policies in order to undermine its international prestige. The fifth chapter analyses the retrospective portrayal of Fascism from 1943-1960, and the ideology of regeneration that developed as a reaction against the cynicism and inhumanity of the regime. The fictional treatment of the Resistance movement and various war journals are also discussed, together with the hostility of reactionary writers towards post-war Italy. A short conclusion outlines some peripheral but relevant considerations, and suggests the difficulties of attempting an accurate assessment of the degree of influence exerted on the novel by Fascism.

<p> In the 19th century, writers like Chateaubriand, Nerval, and Flaubert traveled in search of sublime, exotic transport that still existed (they believed) outside of France. However, this tradition changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the advent of a modernity defined by calculated rationalism and progress, many writers began to lament the death of travel as a sublime, writerly experience. To paraphrase Sartre&rsquo;s Roquentin, they mourned the death or dearth of adventure and enchantment left in the world.</p><p> In my dissertation, I read the travel memoirs of three authors who look for ways of overcoming this <i>disenchantment of the world:</i> the futurist and vagabond Blaise Cendrars, the surrealist ethnographer Michel Leiris, and the heteroclite traveler-poet Henri Michaux. I examine how each of these authors develops a particular method of travel that mixes poetic desire with the technological, social, and political realities of the modern world; Cendrars through a fascination with speed and vehicles, Leiris through ethnography, and Michaux through an obsession with ethical practices of self-control. Each author&rsquo;s method, I show, leads him to form what the critic Michel Deguy calls a <i>po&eacute;thique</i> &mdash; writing that finds enchantment through reason and engagement with the real world. The title of my dissertation, <i>Rational Enchantment,</i> then, describes this <i>po&eacute;thique</i> process. In other words, I show how, through travel, Cendrars, Leiris, and Michaux cultivate representations of enchantment that, in turn, contribute to the re-enchantment the world. </p><p>

<p> This project analyzes a long-neglected dimension of Early Modern Peninsular Studies: court theater. My thesis explores theoretical, political, and scenographic frameworks of court drama written for and produced in the court of Carlos II of Spain. I explore the notions of imagined communities and agency in order to understand how the theater functioned within the Habsburg court, and I juxtapose the role of the king as a spectator to that of the individual consumer of the public theater to confirm it is possible not to identify as part of the mass public during theater consumption. From there, my archival research exposes the political conflicts during the 1670s between Queen Regent Mariana of Austria and her illegitimate step-son, Don Juan Jos&eacute;, as their opposing factions vied to dominate the terrain of courtly politics in Madrid. My research investigates how these tensions were reflected in the 1670s works: <i>La estatua de Prometeo</i> and <i>Fieras afemina amor</i> by Pedro Calder&oacute;n de la Barca. This then led me to consider the political anxieties around the topic of succession in the 1690s as well. I illustrate that Francisco Antonio de Bances Candamo&rsquo;s political trilogy offered viable options for an heir through his presentation of what I term the nephew-king paradigm. My research illustrates how politics and royal theater production in the 1670s and 1690s were linked due to theater&rsquo;s status as a facet of the royal Baroque identity. My project concludes by establishing court drama as its own genre through an investigation of court performance, the scenographic advancement, and the musical evolution in Baroque Spanish court drama&mdash;a highly original artistic genre in seventeenth-century Spain. I establish staged performance as malleable and trans-dynastic as it outlasts the performance of the monarchs for which the work was staged. Ultimately, this project proves that theater is a part of royal Baroque Spanish identity. </p><p>

Throughout her long literary career the Spanish writer Rosa Chacel (1898-) has defined and authorized her work by affiliation with male-dominated literary groups--mainly, the so-called "generation of (eighteen) ninety eight" and, most important, the Spanish avant-garde which was formed around Jose Ortega y Gasset in the twenties. Both groups' understanding of gender and of the creative capacities of women was profoundly conservative. I provide an account of Chacel's mentors--adjusting Harold Bloom's Freudian theory of literary influence to the situation of a woman writer-as a chain of misogynous fathers. The resulting family romance is described here as simultaneously anxiety-producing, productive and troublesome for Chacel, who both draws inspiration from and is compelled to subvert paternal concepts. An analysis of both Chacel's autobiographical and fictional work shows that subversion is one of the most important resources through which the writer negotiates the paradox of her affiliation with the above mentioned precursors. I provide a detailed example of the subversion of the key 'ninety-eight' concept of 'will' in Chacel's autobiography, Desde el amanecer. Similarly, I show the subversion of traditional seduction narratives which takes place in her novel Memorias de Leticia Valle. A relevant fact of Chacel's relation with her literary fathers which thus becomes apparent is that the writer negotiates her differences with her mentors on questions of gender exclusively in a textual manner. Although most of this dissertation is devoted to explaining the complexities and contradictions of Chacel's approach to femininity in terms of her relation with her literary fathers, I suggest strongly in the end that the mother also occupies a central, albeit subdued, role in Chacel's family romance. Ultimately, Chacel is revealed as a writer haunted and seduced both by father and mother, thus dwelling in a space defined by indecision, a position which I consider emblematic of the complex predicament of many women writers in patriarchy.