An examination of the affinities between Baudelaire and Gautier in matters of aesthetic principle, as seen in the light of their personal relations, the social climate of their times, and their works. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Tra il XIX ed il XX secolo, sono stati effettuati diversi studi riguardo al patronato letterario di Isabella d’Este e al mecenatismo praticato verso gli artisti da suo figlio, Federico II Gonzaga, primo duca di Mantova. Una nuova prospettiva di ricerca induce oggi a indagare il ruolo di Federico II come committente letterario, distinto dalla Marchesana Isabella, e i suoi interessi letterari. Vari autori, più o meno celebri, risultano avere avuto relazioni con Federico II Gonzaga, in quanto o gli hanno dedicato le loro opere o lo hanno citato in esse oppure perché è stato loro richiesto di comporre testi dal duca stesso. Molti di questi lavori sono registrati nell’inventario di Federico II, che ci dà alcune idee circa le sue preferenze, rivolte soprattutto alle opere astrologiche e ai testi cavallereschi, e circa le sue relazioni letterarie. Gli scrittori legati a Federico II hanno spesso cercato di procurare vantaggi tramite l’attività letteraria a se stessi e al loro mecenate. Si può ritenere che Federico II fosse inserito in una più ampia rete di relazioni letterarie sviluppatesi intorno alla corte di Mantova e che abbia impiegato la propria cultura letteraria e le opere letterarie come uno strumento di potere. / Between the 19th and the 20th century several studies were carried out with regard to the literary patronage of Isabella d’Este and in connection with the maecenatism practiced towards artists by her son Federico II Gonzaga, first Duke of Mantua. Nowadays, a new perspective of research induces to investigate the role of Federico II as literary client, separated from the Marchesana Isabella, as well as his literary interests. Various more or less famous authors have been found to have had some relationships with Federico II Gonzaga, either because they mentioned him in their works and dedicated them to him, or because they were requested to compose texts by the duke himself. Many of these works are registered in Federico II’s inventory, which gives us some ideas about his literary preferences, particularly directed to astrological works and chivalric texts, and his literary relationships. The writers linked to Federico II often tried to obtain some advantages for themselves and their patron through their literary activity. It can also be maintained that there was a wider network of literary relationship around the court of Mantua, and that Federico II used his literary culture and the literary works as a tool of power.

My thesis studies Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth to redress the unjust neglect of Hartley’s work, and to reach a more positive understanding of Dorothy’s conflicted literary relationship with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I provide a complete reassessment of the often narrowly read prose and poetry of these two critically marginalized figures, and also investigate the relationships that affected their lives, literary self-constructions, and reception; in this way, I restore a more accurate account of Hartley and Dorothy as independent and original writers, and also highlight both the inhibiting and cathartic affects of writing from within a familial literary context. My analysis of the writings of Hartley and Dorothy and the dialogues in which they engage with the works of STC and William, argues that both Hartley and Dorothy developed a strong relational poetics in their endeavour to demarcate their independent subjectivities. Furthermore, through a survey of the significance of the sibling bond – literal and figurative – in the texts and lives of all these writers, I demonstrate a theory of influence which recognizes lateral, rather than paternal, kinship as the most influential relationship. I thus conclude that authorial identity is not fundamentally predetermined by, and dependent on, gender or literary inheritance, but is more significantly governed by domestic environment, familial readership, and immediate kinship. My thesis challenges the long-standing misconceptions that Hartley was unable to achieve a strong poetic identity in STC’s shadow, and that Dorothy’s independent authorial endeavour was primarily thwarted by gender. To replace these misreadings, I foreground the successful literary independence of both writers: my approach reinstates Hartley Coleridge’s literary standing as a major poet who bridged Romanticism and Victorian literature, and promotes Dorothy Wordsworth as one of the finest descriptive writers of nature and relationship.