Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

In this course we will look at 19th and 20th century British and American writers' and painters' reactions to Italian paintings of the Renaissance (and of later centuries), in particular by Titian (but not only: Tintoretto and Tiepolo will be discussed too).
The "beastly Venus" was of course the Venus of Urbino by Titian, in the Tribune of the Uffizi Gallery: a painting of a naked woman, lying on a couch, which has been at the center of recent critical debate to decide whether she was a seducing naked woman or a goddess, as the title would imply.
The reactions to this and other paintings express the Puritan attitude of many American writers, who could simply not accept the nude; they also indicate a more general suspicion as regards art.
We will be looking at the relationship between the role of art and that of practical "meckanics" (the practical arts: engineering, agriculture etc.) which seemed more important in the early years of the American republic.
Other problems connected with the Americans "looking" at paintings will be discussed: the knowledge and awareness of art in America before writers and artists came to Europe, a knowledge dependent on the circulation of prints, copies, but also local exhibitions; the importance of copies, both as a means of knowledge and as a means for the young painters to pay their own Grand Tour; the need for technical information, particularly as regards oil painting; the beginning of the taste for collecting, often contrary to what collectors were "preaching" as regards the usefulness (or uselessness) of art in the young republic (J.Adams, Th. Jefferson).
We will also look at the way specific paintings acted on the writers' imagination, in stories and poems.
We will be reading diaries, letters, stories, poems, by N. Hawthorne, Robert Herrick, Henry James, W.D. Howells, Edith Wharton, Ezra Pound, Mary McCarthy, Bernard Malamud and others. Readings from British writers will fill in some of the background.

Aim of the course
T o make students aware of the different ways of looking at paintings and to make them add their own reactions to those recorded, and to see how art can influence creative writing. To achieve some knowledge of literary texts concerning art.
We will go and look at some paintings on location.

Bibliography
The reading package will contain most of the material: excerpts of diaries, letters and essays by John Singleton Copley, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mary MacCarthy and others.
Stories: Christina Rossetti, The Lost Titian, Henry James, Travelling Companions, Robert Herrick, A Rejected Titian, Bernard Malamud, Pictures of Fidelman. Poems: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, For a Venetian Pastoral, Ezra Pound, from The Cantos, Robert Lowell, Charles V.
Background material: excerpts from Sir Joshua Reynolds, Anna Jameson, John Ruskin, Walter Pater and others.
A critical bibliography will be provided at the beginning of the course. Students can start reading David Freedberg, The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, U. of Chicago P., 1989 (esp. Ch.1 and Ch. 13).

Evaluation
Oral and written reports during the course; class participation and discussion. Final paper.

Biography
Laurea in English and American Literature (Ca’ Foscari). Professor of American Literature at Ca’ Foscari, where she is also Chair of the American Studies Program and Director of the Higher Degree course in Literary Translation from English into Italian. Published, among other books, Invito alla lettura di Faulkner, Mursia, Milano 1976. Translated W. Faulkner, G. Stein, R. Jarrell and F.M. Ford. Recent interest has focused on the relation between art and literature, and on H. James, E. Wharton, and the reaction of American writers to Venetian painting. Publications include: the edition of James’ Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro, London, Pushkin Press, 1998 (second edition June 2001); “Into Forbidden Ground: J.A.Symonds and Tiepolo” in John Addington Symonds. Culture and the Demon Desire, John Pemble ed., Macmillan, London 2000; “Tiepolo, Henry James, and Edith Wharton”, in The Metropolitan Museum Journal, 33, 1998; “The Pastimes of Culture. The Tableaux Vivants of the British Expatriates in Venice in the 1880s and 1890s”, in Textus, English Studies in Italy, XII (1999) 1; “Venetian Mirrors. Barrett or Browning as the artist?” in The Author as Character, P. Franssen and T. Hoenselaars eds., Associated University Presses, London 1999; “Intertextual Venice: Blood and Crime and Death Renewed in two Contemporary Novels”, in Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds. English Fantasies of Venice, M. Pfister and B. Schaff (eds.), Rodopi, Amsterdam 1999.