Mariaconcetta Costantini
BIOGRAPHYMariaconcetta Costantini is professor of English Literature (L-LIN/10). She obtained her current position in 2012 and got tenure in 2015. She was previously Assistant Professor (1998-2001) and Associate Professor of English Literature (2001-2012) at “G. d’Annunzio” University. She received her degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures at “G. d’Annunzio” University in 1990 (110/110 cum laude). She attended a postgraduate course in Literary Translation at La Sapienza University of Rome (1993) and the Summer School course in Translation Studies at the University of Bratislav, Slovak Republic (1994). In 1996 she was Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Manchester, UK. She holds a Doctorate in English Studies from G. d’Annunzio University (2000).Teaching experiencesShe taught English Literature, Anglophone Literature, English Culture and Institutions, and English Language and Translation at “G. d’Annunzio” University since 1999. She has also taught Master courses, and lectured and organized seminars for PhD students in English Studies and doctoral students of the Scuola Superiore at “G. d’Annunzio” UniversityResearch and editorial activitiesHer research mainly focuses on Victorian literature and culture, with a special interest in the sensation fiction, the gothic and colonial issues. She has also carried out research on contemporary topics, in particular on postmodern and postcolonial questions. On these topics, she has written and edited volumes, published several articles in journals and contributed book chapters both in Italy and abroad.Since 1995 she has read papers and convened seminars at more than sixty international conferences in Europe and North America. As invited Visiting Scholar she has given lectures on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, as well as on anglophone literature and relations between Italy and the English speaking world, in Italian universities (Pisa, Sassari, Pavia, Catania, Milano, Venezia, Trento, Lecce) as well as in foreign ones (Oakland University, Nazareth College and Salem State University in the US
Address: English Literature,
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne
Università G. d'Annunzio
Viale Pindaro, 87
65127 Pescara
Italy
Address: English Literature,
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne
Università G. d'Annunzio
Viale Pindaro, 87
65127 Pescara
Italy
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- "The Chemistry of Taste: Aesthetics, Literature, and the Rise of the Impure" (by Francesca Orestano)
- "Starving by Numbers: William Farr, Medical Statistics and the Social Aesthetics of Hunger" (by Andrew S. Mangham)
- "'The mind washes its hands in a basin': Walter Bagehot's Literary Essays and Impure Criticism" (by Silvana Colella)
- "Fact and Taste: Thematic and Metaliterary Impurity in 'Hard Times'" (by Saverio Tomaiuolo)
- "Morbid Taste, Morbid Anatomy and Victorian Sensation Fiction" (by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas)
- "'You’re obliged to have recourse to bodies': Corporeal Proliferation, Class, and Literary Taste in M. E. Braddon’s Revision of 'The Outcasts'" (by Anne-Marie Beller)
- "'Sensational nonsense': Edward Lear and the (Im)purity of Nonsense Writing" (by Raffaella Antinucci)
- "Hopkins’s Poetic Porcupines and the Aesthetic of Taste" (by
Jude V. Nixon"
- "Transgressive Art 'Before the Mirror': Swinburne, Hardy, Kristeva" (by Roger Ebbatson)
- "Impure Researches, or Literature, Marketing and Aesthesis: The Case of Ouida’s 'A Dog of Flanders' (1871 ‑ today)" (by Andrew King)
- "The Sacred in Pater's Aesthetic: Ambivalences and Tensions" (by Maria Luisa De Rinaldis)
- "Late-Victorian Modes of the Aesthetic Impure: The Strange Case of Arthur Machen" (by Gilles Menegaldo)
- "Consumerism, Celebrity Culture and the Aesthetic Impure in Oscar Wilde" (by Pierpaolo Martino)
- "The Chemistry of Taste: Aesthetics, Literature, and the Rise of the Impure" (by Francesca Orestano)
- "Starving by Numbers: William Farr, Medical Statistics and the Social Aesthetics of Hunger" (by Andrew S. Mangham)
- "'The mind washes its hands in a basin': Walter Bagehot's Literary Essays and Impure Criticism" (by Silvana Colella)
- "Fact and Taste: Thematic and Metaliterary Impurity in 'Hard Times'" (by Saverio Tomaiuolo)
- "Morbid Taste, Morbid Anatomy and Victorian Sensation Fiction" (by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas)
- "'You’re obliged to have recourse to bodies': Corporeal Proliferation, Class, and Literary Taste in M. E. Braddon’s Revision of 'The Outcasts'" (by Anne-Marie Beller)
- "'Sensational nonsense': Edward Lear and the (Im)purity of Nonsense Writing" (by Raffaella Antinucci)
- "Hopkins’s Poetic Porcupines and the Aesthetic of Taste" (by
Jude V. Nixon"
- "Transgressive Art 'Before the Mirror': Swinburne, Hardy, Kristeva" (by Roger Ebbatson)
- "Impure Researches, or Literature, Marketing and Aesthesis: The Case of Ouida’s 'A Dog of Flanders' (1871 ‑ today)" (by Andrew King)
- "The Sacred in Pater's Aesthetic: Ambivalences and Tensions" (by Maria Luisa De Rinaldis)
- "Late-Victorian Modes of the Aesthetic Impure: The Strange Case of Arthur Machen" (by Gilles Menegaldo)
- "Consumerism, Celebrity Culture and the Aesthetic Impure in Oscar Wilde" (by Pierpaolo Martino)
A thriving member of the rising professional class, Braddon undoubtedly aligned herself with the ideal of middle-class industry, which she frequently praised in quasi-Smilesian tones. Still, there are in her narratives significant traces of a counter discourse that is worth examining. Through the voices of fictional alter egos employed in the periodical press (i.e., writers, editors, journalists), Braddon manifested her worries about some dark sides of the Victorian celebration of labour, especially those emerging in the expanding periodical-press world. In so doing, she participated in a socio-cultural and aesthetic debate that involved many of her contemporaries, including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, who similarly fictionalized their professional experiences and doubts.
This paper explores some ideological implications of the above-mentioned counter discourse woven by Braddon, which is particularly evident in her understudied novel "Dead-Sea Fruit" (1867- 68). The perplexing characterization and the provocative metaphors of this novel not only unveil some discontents of labour by exposing the enslaving mechanisms of the Victorian print industry. They also, and notably, raise questions on the best approach to creative writing – an occupation which, though pursued with zeal, also needs leisure to produce remarkably good fruits.
Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle (25 August-1 September 2014)
March 26, 2021: online (Microsoft Teams)
Convened by Silvia Antosa (“Kore” University of Enna), Mariaconcetta Costantini ("G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara) and Mara Mattoscio ("G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara)