Description
Book SynopsisJulia Straub is Lecturer in Literatures in English at the University of Berne, Switzerland.
Trade Review"A Victorian Muse makes an important contribution to research on the nineteenth-century reception of Dante. Julia Straub's approach combines theoretical sophistication with clarity of exposition and wide-ranging scholarship. Her work will also be of value to those interested in gender issues, aesthetics and relationships between media during the period." (Nick Havely, Professor of English & Related Literature, University of York, UK; editor of Dante's Modern Afterlife) "If Dante is 'the central man of all the world' as Ruskin argued, then Beatrice, as Julia Straub so beautifully argues, is the central woman, a figure who embodies the idealisations of Victorian culture, but also their critique. The most arresting chapter for me was that on Walter Pater, where Straub demonstrates that a study of Beatrice's redemptive femininity actually allows the articulation of a specifically masculine mode of creativity." (Alison Milbank, Associate Professor, Department of Theology, The University of Nottingham, UK)"
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; List of Figures; 1. Introduction: Beatrice's Victorian Afterlife; 2. Seeing Beatrice: The Visualization of Beatrice in Victorian Culture; 3. Looking for the Real Beatrice: The Rossetti Family; 4. Ideal Visions: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti; 5. Deconstruction of an Ideal: George Eliot's Romola; 6. Mourning a Male Beatrice: Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam; 7. Construction of a New Ideal: Walter Pater's 'Diaphaneite'; Conclusion; Biliography; Index.
