de genere - Rivista di studi letterari, postcoloniali e di genere

The Legacy of Shelley’s Vegetarianism: From Henry Stephens Salt to Gandhi

Elisabetta Marino — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This essay sets out to explore P.B. Shelley’s adherence to a natural diet, given its ethical foundations, and the influence (both direct and mediated) that his thought exercised on Mohandas Gandhi in his adoption of vegetarianism and his belief in non-violent resistance. Central to this investigation is the role played by Henry Stephens Salt, a Victorian social reformer, a member of the Vegetarian Society, and a Shelley scholar who devoted strenuous efforts to popularising the poet’s works and pioneering ideas.

P.B. Shelley in Russia e negli Stati Uniti tra fine Ottocento e inizi Novecento: le traduzioni e le riscritture di Konstantin D. Bal’mont e John Reed

Marzia Dati — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In questo saggio si indaga l’impatto dell’opera poetica di Shelley su Konstantin Bal’mont’ (1867-1942), poeta simbolista e traduttore russo, e John Reed (1887-1920), poeta e giornalista nordamericano. Nella prima parte di questo lavoro si farà luce sulla traduzione dell’opera omnia di Shelley a cura di Bal’mont con particolare riferimento alla traduzione in russo di Ozymandias; successivamente si tratterà della riscrittura della stessa da parte di Reed intitolata Tamburlaine. Shelley è anche tra i protagonisti del poema The Day in Bohemia, or Life among the Artists di John Reed. Ciò che emerge è come i tre poeti siano accomunati da un atteggiamento anticonvenzionale verso la società: tre romantici rivoluzionari i cui ideali presero forma nella loro poetica visionaria.

Fantasmi di un romanzo: Frankenstein sulla scena contemporanea francese nelle riscritture di Philippe Faure (1994) e Jean-François Peyret (2018)

Simona Munari — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Simili nella dimensione militante che caratterizza le loro operazioni, Philippe Faure e Jean-François Peyret si confrontano con il mito letterario di Frankenstein interpretando in modo diverso il dialogo che il teatro sempre instaura, per sua natura, con ciò che accade nel mondo. Ma sulla scena contemporanea, dove lo spettacolo è spesso inteso come performance unica e non riproducibile piuttosto che come elemento di un repertorio, il testo può diventare un elemento secondario: le due riscritture oggetto di questo studio sollecitano una riflessione critica sul suo ruolo, e sulle conseguenze della sua assenza nella ricezione di un progetto teatrale.

Il Prometeo post-moderno: strategie narrative nella riscrittura fumettistica del Frankenstein di Benoît Becker

Alessio Rischia — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

La Tour de Frankenstein è il primo di sei volumi scritti tra il 1957 e il 1958 per Angoisse, collana horror della casa editrice Fleuve Noir, in cui Benoît Becker (pseudonimo di Jean-Claude Carrière) prosegue la narrazione di Mary Shelley seguendo la scia del film di James Whale. Nel 1972, l’editore francese di fumetti Aredit dedica sette numeri della sua collana Hallucinations all’adattamento dei romanzi di Becker. Il fumetto introduce strategie narrative specifiche del medium, sfruttando la potenza espressiva della dimensione visiva per riscrivere la “creatura”. Le sue sembianze, modellate esplicitamente sul volto di Boris Karloff, si disgregano progressivamente in un’immagine sempre più demoniaca. La narrazione frammentata e la costruzione delle tavole riflettono questa evoluzione, rafforzando l’idea del mostro come entità instabile, refrattaria a ogni categorizzazione. In questo processo, la creatura si spoglia definitivamente di ogni traccia di umanità, trasformandosi in un’icona pop, destinata a reincarnarsi costantemente nella cultura visiva contemporanea.

La fortuna di Mary Shelley in Francia e in Italia: dal Frankenstein di Jules Saladin (1821) a quello di Ranieri Cochetti (1944)

Letizia Carbutto — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dal confronto tra la prima traduzione francese di Frankenstein (Saladin, 1821) e la prima traduzione italiana (Cochetti, 1944) emerge chiaramente il profondo legame che da sempre intercorre tra traduzione, interpretazione e ricezione. Se l’anglomania francese, amplificata proprio dalle frequenti traduzioni, crea le condizioni ideali per la resa immediata e consapevole di Saladin, e dunque per la successiva fortuna di Shelley in Francia, l’opposta resistenza alla letteratura inglese e gotica in Italia influenza, al contrario, la tardiva e disinvolta versione di Cochetti, a dimostrazione di quanto la traduzione orienti e sia al tempo stesso orientata dalla percezione delle culture straniere nel contesto di arrivo.

Commistioni ottocentesche: quando Frankenstein incontra Hyde

Carla Fusco — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Il saggio analizza la rappresentazione del doppio mostruoso nel fumetto Mister Hyde contro Frankenstein (Torino: Nowcomics, 2014), un’opera che rielabora in chiave gotico-steampunk le figure archetipiche della creatura di Frankenstein e di Mr. Hyde. Partendo da una lettura semiotica e intertestuale, il lavoro mette in relazione il fumetto con i romanzi ottocenteschi di Mary Shelley e Robert Louis Stevenson, evidenziando come questi personaggi continuino a incarnare paure culturali legate alla scienza, all’identità e all’inconscio. Il saggio integra varie prospettive teoriche per esplorare come i concetti di alterità, mostruosità e scissione dell’io siano tradotti visivamente e narrativamente nel medium fumettistico contemporaneo.

Mary Shelley’s Visions Live again through Diane Arbus’s Photographs

Daniela Coramusi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mary Shelley and Diane Arbus are two prominent artists who lived at different times, in different countries and social contexts, and expressed themselves in two different fields: literature and photography. Nowadays the value of their art is unquestioned, but their popularity is also due to the powerful presence of monstrous, disquieting but also fascinating and intriguing images we find both in Shelley’s Frankenstein and in Arbus’s photographs. This research tries to detect some of the reasons that urged the two artists to develop and stress the visual element in their works. In a sort of risky parallel between two distinct arts, the so called “monster theory” is applied to the analysis of their production. The monstrous body, be it a giant, a demon or a “freak”, is the symbolic interpretation of fears, desires, cultural unease that pervade society in every age. In particular, it is also the expression of specific intellectual, political, sexual doubts and fears that women artists and women in general encounter and try to overcome in their lives and careers. Evident similarities between the two life experiences also confirm that every creative woman exerts an influence on the subsequent women artists, and this process constantly opens new research fields for us.

1829: The Turning Point for Shelley’s Reputation

Nora Crook — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The article argues for 1829 as the year in which Percy Bysshe Shelley’s reputation as a great and enduring poet is secured and for the importance of Europe and America in effecting this. This process interweaves and is concurrent with the better-documented efforts of Mary Shelley, Leigh Hunt, and the British radical underground press. Key texts here are Thomas Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron (1824), Hazlitt’s anthology, Select British Poets (1824, suppressed for copyright reasons but resold in America and plundered and diffused by French anthologists), and, crucially, Galignani’s pirated Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (1829). During this period Shelley becomes best known in France, Italy, and Germany as the associate of Byron and as the author of The Cenci. His increasing visibility comes to a head in 1829, when the discovery of an unpublished Shelley poem prompts the enthusiastic claim on his behalf that “with the single exception of Lord Byron, no poet of our day has evinced a more strikingly powerful and original genius”.

“The Burthen of the Curse of Babel”: Mary Shelley’s Handling of Shelley’s Translations

Valentina Varinelli — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Percy Bysshe Shelley authored numerous translations, in poetry as well as in prose, from modern and classical languages. Only three of them were published in his lifetime: the translation of Dante’s sonnet, “Guido, vorrei, che tu, e Lappo, ed io”, and the sonnet-version of an idyll by Moschus appeared in the Alastor volume, while the last stanza of the rendering of Dante’s Canzone, “Voi, che ’ntendendo, il terzo Ciel movete”, was printed after the Advertisement to Epipsychidion. Shelley’s other translations may also have been intended for publication; however, after his untimely death, Mary Shelley published only a few, much sanitised specimens of them, which she grouped together at the end of her successive editions of Shelley’s works. Thus, not only did she contradict her statement in the Preface to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley that “I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me, than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader”, but she also implied that his translations were distinct from, and subsidiary to, his original compositions. The article traces the reasons for such treatment back to Shelley’s own attitude towards translation and reconstructs the editorial history of his renderings from Mary Shelley’s Posthumous Poems to the present to show how her decisions, and therefore, ultimately, Shelley’s views, have influenced later editors.

Rambling with a “New Race” of Travelers: Mary Shelley’s Anglo-Italian Visioning and Margaret Fuller’s “Thinking American” in Italy

Renee Schlueter — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Although Italy profoundly transformed the personal and professional lives of Mary Shelley (1797–1851) and Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), critics rarely consider the British Romantic and her American counterpart in tandem. This article therefore crosses transnational boundaries to reveal how Shelley and Fuller project their Italianized awakenings in letters, editorials, and travel writing. More specifically, it traces the convergence of their ideological visions through their shared yet contrasting use of travel tropes. Just as Shelley contrasts an enlightened “Anglo-Italian” traveler from an uncultivated English John Bull, Fuller distinguishes the “Thinking American” explorer from his naïve counterpart, Jonathan. Bringing these neglected travel tropes to the foreground offers a fresh lens for understanding Shelley’s and Fuller’s shared feminist ideals, especially the role of mindful travel in redressing Italian stereotypes and even preserving Italian culture. Moreover, through their distinct but unwavering support for the Risorgimento, both authors challenge female domestic boundaries and national loyalties, gazing differently to redress British and American cultural insularity. Even today, Shelley and Fuller reach across boundaries of time and culture, inviting modern travelers to pursue a transformative pathway to global citizenship.

Editorial

Serena Guarracino; Marta Cariello — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Transnational Shelley(s): Metamorphoses and Reconfigurations

Elisabetta Marino, Paolo Bugliani — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

P.B. Shelley’s Fin-de-Siècle Reception in Scotland: The Case of William Sharp/Fiona Macleod

Giuseppe Capalbo — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper aims to explore the reception of P.B. Shelley in fin-de-siècle Scotland, with regard to the work of William Sharp (1855–1905). Firstly, it will compare his Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1887) with other existing biographies in order to evaluate its degree of reliability: indeed, as Theresa Kelley has pointed out, despite a great deal of information, many biographies of Shelley are unreliable, such as those by Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1858) and Edward John Trelawny (1858, revised and expanded in 1878). Secondly, this study will look at how the work of P.B. Shelley influenced Sharp’s oeuvre: specifically, it will focus on The Washer of the Ford and Other Legendary Moralities, published in 1896 under the female pseudonym of Fiona Macleod. In this respect, I will consider the intertextual references to P.B. Shelley (e.g. On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery, 1819) as well as the ways in which the subject matter challenged common assumptions about the relationship between gender and genre: as Thomas Janvier stated soon after its publication, The Washer of the Ford was “not impossible for a woman to write, but unlikely”.

“The Silken Skilled Transmemberment of Song”: Shelley, Romantic Visionary Quest, and the Poetry of Hart Crane

Mark Sandy — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Taking seriously the critical estimations of Harold Bloom and Michael O’Neill that Hart Crane is the true American inheritor of Shelley’s poetic legacy, my article explores the theme of Romantic visionary quest in Crane’s poetry. I argue that this peculiarly Shelleyan motif of visionary quest in Crane’s “Repose of Rivers”, “Praise for an Urn”, “Voyages”, “The Harbour Dawn”, and “Atlantis” acts as a prism through which to view Crane’s imaginative entanglements with the poetry of Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats.

The long shadow of P.B. Shelley’s Defence of Poetry on Anglo-American Modernist Manifestoes

Paolo Bugliani — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper aims at showing how Shelley’s Defence of Poetry proved influential in 19^th- and 20^th-century aesthetics, despite Modernist criticisms of his poetic achievements as immature and overly sentimental. In particular, the article examines textual instances where James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Wallace Stevens’s pronouncements of poetics seem not merely to respond to, but to have been shaped around and through Shelley’s Defense.