Merope

Raffaella Sciarra: «Jane Austen» (Merope n. 63 - pp. 61-85)

Raffaella Sciarra
“In trade”: commercio, profitti e snobismo di casta in Emma
di Jane Austen

Abstract — Through an in-depth analysis of Emma and its main and secondary characters, I aim to demonstrate how Austen’s work increasingly engage in a complex relationship to the economy, moving through an examination of it as measure of social morality but also as agent of social disruption. Throughout the eighteenth century, commerce and trade were viewed on the one hand as necessary to the well-being of the nation and on the other as a threat to the social order. In this context, the man of commerce was figured as a cause of disorder in English culture. The fearsome personal mobility of social status was becoming more achievable as Austen wrote: in the circumscribed social context of Highbury, one of the recurring themes thus pivots on rank and its defence from attacks of a changing world. In particular, I will examine the role of all characters “in trade” or related to commerce, and the opinionated way they are depicted by the author. The stigma of commerce is indeed evident throughout the novel and it reflects the reaction of the time to the emerging commercial and consumer culture. In a time when the general order and stability of society and the “rights of property” were inseparably linked, the emerging of the new upstarts, i.e., the broad category of moneyed and professional families that struggle to conquer a place in society, becomes a terrifying menace to the old ranked “landed gentry”. However, social acceptance proves harder to achieve than material wealth.

Keywords: commerce, economy, rank, order, mobility

Angelo Riccioni: «Frederic Prokosch» (Merope n. 63 - pp. 39-60)

Angelo Riccioni
Frederic Prokosch e il mito di Lord Byron

Abstract — This essay provides an analysis of a long-forgotten novel about Lord Byron, The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968), written by the American author Frederic Prokosch (1906-1989). Born in a cosmopolitan and well educated family in Madison, Wisconsin, Prokosch travelled widely for much of his life through Europe, writing books that aroused the admiration of Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Thornton Wilder and of his long-dated friend Gore Vidal. At first sight a reconstruction of the lost memoirs of Lord Byron, The Missolonghi Manuscript actually is, in his author’s words, ‘a study of the romantic artist’. As a consequence, the novel seems to transcends Byron’s life involving reflections on the way Romantic art changed the history of ideas. Focusing on the reasons that led Prokosch to write his imaginary portrait of the ‘Wicked Lord’ and examining the modalities of his literary depiction of Byron, this work explores how history and biography blend together in The Missolonghi Manuscript in order to depict the Zeitgeist of the Romantic Era. Finally, this essay aims to revaluate the position of Frederic Prokosch in XX century literature, stressing the importance of The Missolonghi Manuscript as a precursor to that kind of postmodernist historical fiction notably practised by Anthony Burgess, A.S Byatt and Umberto Eco.

Keywords: Frederic Prokosch, Lord Byron, The Missolonghi Manuscript, Romanticism, imaginary portrait

Francesco Marroni: «Beckett» (Merope n. 63 - pp. 5-37)

Francesco Marroni
Beckett, le arti visive e gli antimodelli estetici

Abstract — In his search for an aesthetics which would liberate him from the influence of Joyce and allow him to discover a new literary approach, Beckett found important suggestions as well as a working method in the visual arts. What he learnt initially from Dutch art and, later, from David Caspar Friedrich would lead to the minimalist valence of his writing which was not unconnected with an interpretation of humanity as an insignificant presence within the vast dimension of the cosmos. As a result of his continual dialogue with the visual arts, Beckett would measure himself against Paul Cézanne from whom, as suggested by the watercolour Mont Sainte-Victoire, he derived the image of a deanthropomorphised world. In both his plays and narrative works, Beckett translates this idea by representing human beings in the face of nothingness as derelict creatures whose only sense of destiny is their own misery and fragmented survival.

Keywords: Beckett, visual arts, aesthetics, antimodels, deanthropomorphisation, nothingness