Half a millennium of English and American fantasies of Venice: this collection of essays by leading critics in the field explores the continued and continuing fascination of travellers, writers, artists, theatre workers and film makers with the amphibious and ambiguous city in the lagoon. There is hardly another place in Europe that has become so much of a palimpsest, inscribed with the fantasies, the dreams and nightmares of generations of foreigners, and this turns Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds into a particularly pertinent case study of the ways cultural difference within Europe is experienced, enacted and constructed. The essays range across five centuries - from the Renaissance to our postmodern present, from Shakespeare and his contemporary Coryate to recent novels, detective fiction and films - and, in contrast to previous studies focussing on the Grand Tour, they emphasise more recent developments and how they continue or disrupt traditional ways of perceiving - or being blind to! - Venice.
Contents: Manfred PFISTER and Barbara SCHAFF: Introduction. Manfred PFISTER: The Passion from Winterson to Coryate. Andreas MAHLER: Writing Venice: Paradoxical Signification as Connotational Feature. Tony TANNER: "Which is the Merchant here? And which the Jew?": The Venice of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Jürgen SCHLAEGER: Elective Affinities: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in Venice. Elinor SHAFFER: William Beckford in Venice, Liminal City: The Pavilion and the Interminable Staircase. Barbara SCHAFF: Venetian Views and Voices in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Braddon's The Venetians. Werner von KOPPENFELS: Sunset City - City of the Dead: Venice and the 19th Century Apocalyptic Imagination. Sergio PEROSA: Literary Deaths in Venice. Elisabeth BRONFEN: Venice - Site of Mutability, Transgression and Imagination. Michael GORRA: The Venetian Hours of Henry James. Ina SCHABERT: An Amazon in Venice: Vernon Lee's "Lady Tal". Erika FISCHER-LICHTE: Theatre as Festive Play: Max Reinhardt's Production of The Merchant of Venice in Venice. Virginia RICHTER: Tourists Lost in Venice: Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now and Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers. Sabine SCHÜLTING: 'Dream Factories': Hollywood and Venice in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Indira GHOSE: Confidential Venice. Rosella MAMOLI ZORZI: Intertextual Venice: Blood and Crime and Death Renewed in Two Contemporary Novels. Judith SEABOYER: Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice: An Anatomy of a Talking Book.
Contents: Manfred PFISTER and Barbara SCHAFF: Introduction. Manfred PFISTER: The Passion from Winterson to Coryate. Andreas MAHLER: Writing Venice: Paradoxical Signification as Connotational Feature. Tony TANNER: "Which is the Merchant here? And which the Jew?": The Venice of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Jürgen SCHLAEGER: Elective Affinities: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in Venice. Elinor SHAFFER: William Beckford in Venice, Liminal City: The Pavilion and the Interminable Staircase. Barbara SCHAFF: Venetian Views and Voices in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Braddon's The Venetians. Werner von KOPPENFELS: Sunset City - City of the Dead: Venice and the 19th Century Apocalyptic Imagination. Sergio PEROSA: Literary Deaths in Venice. Elisabeth BRONFEN: Venice - Site of Mutability, Transgression and Imagination. Michael GORRA: The Venetian Hours of Henry James. Ina SCHABERT: An Amazon in Venice: Vernon Lee's "Lady Tal". Erika FISCHER-LICHTE: Theatre as Festive Play: Max Reinhardt's Production of The Merchant of Venice in Venice. Virginia RICHTER: Tourists Lost in Venice: Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now and Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers. Sabine SCHÜLTING: 'Dream Factories': Hollywood and Venice in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Indira GHOSE: Confidential Venice. Rosella MAMOLI ZORZI: Intertextual Venice: Blood and Crime and Death Renewed in Two Contemporary Novels. Judith SEABOYER: Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice: An Anatomy of a Talking Book.