‘She shook her heavy tresses, and their perfume filled the place’: The Seductive Fragrance of ‘that awful sorceress’: H. Rider Haggard's femme fatale, Ayesha

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-265
Author(s):  
Jemma Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Central Character ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Popular Romance ◽  
The Creation

This paper explores perfume, scent, and floriography as an aspect of the archetype of the femme fatale, specifically in the context of the late-Victorian Gothic and its afterlives. As an expansion of the concept of a masculine-Gothic language of flowers, this article analyses H. Rider Haggard's Ayesha, a central character within his popular romance, She, by reviewing the significance of the artificially floral in her development. Perfume and floriography in She convey not only the aura of mystically seductive danger intrinsic to the creation of the femme fatale, but also suggest the longevity, originality and power imbued in this archetype. The article argues that much of Ayesha's complexity and continued appeal rests on the idea that the Gothic and perfume significantly influence her portrayal as a femme fatale whilst allowing for her individuality.

Visibilis et Invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society*

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Creation

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.

Femme Fatale as Scapegoat: the Modernity of Aimée Desclée

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (24) ◽  
pp. 365-378
Author(s):  
John Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Third Republic ◽  
Early Death ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
New Realism ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

A scandalously successful life as an actress and a tragically early death seemed to cast Aimée Desclée in a stereotypical romantic mould, as did a succession of emotionally-fraught roles, notably in the plays of the younger Dumas. But contemporaries praised the new realism she brought to the passionately wayward women she portrayed. In what did this ‘realism’ consist, and in whose eyes did the virtual equation of female desire with neurosis constitute ‘reality’? John Stokes, who teaches in the Department of English in the University of Warwick, here follows an outline of her career and its context with detailed examinations of the creation, nature, and reception of her most famous roles – finally exploring the effects of the events surrounding the creation of the Third Republic and the impact of the Paris Commune of 1870 on the way in which male playwrights and audiences perceived the women she played in her later years. John Stokes recently contributed the section on Bernhardt to Bernhardt. Terry. Duse: the Actress in her Time, with Michael Booth and Susan Bassnett (Cambridge, 1988).

The Creation of the Femme Fatale in Egyptian Cinema

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-329
Author(s):  
Carolina Bracco
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Good Woman ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Egyptian Cinema

Abstract The appearance of the character of a femme fatale in Egyptian cinema in the mid-1950s is deeply intertwined with the new social and moral imprint made by the Nasserist regime. At a time when women’s participation in the public sphere was regulated, the portrayal of the evil woman was intended to define how the good woman should behave as well as the terrible fate in store for those who dared to flout the limits. This evil woman was embodied in the character of the Oriental dancer who was to be seen, from that time on, as a fallen woman. This article aims to discuss the mutation of the character of the dancer from a bint al balad (lit. “girl of the country”) to a femme fatale by analyzing three films starring two icons of the time, Hind Rustum and Tahia Carioca.

Evil by Design. The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-226
Author(s):  
C. Moran
Keyword(s):  
Femme Fatale ◽  
The Creation

scholarly journals Irish Rioters, Latin American Dictators, and Desperate Optimists' Play-boy

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-254
Author(s):  
Neal Swettenham
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Western World ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Narrative Process ◽  
The Creation

The narrative process is inherently selective and consequently open to distortion and falsification. J. M. Synge humorously illustrated this in The Playboy of the Western World, in which his central character, Christy Mahon, reinvents himself through the telling and retelling of his own story. Play-boy, a much more recent performance work created by Desperate Optimists, takes as its opening gambit the riots that accompanied the first performances of this controversial Irish classic and adds a bewildering variety of other narrative materials to the mix—providing, as it does so, a tongue-in-cheek commentary on this story about stories. A detailed account of the show in performance and the manner in which the company construct their own tall tales initiates an investigation into how fact becomes fiction in the creation of new narrative accounts, narrative being considered as a participatory event that is both a psychological imperative and a ludic pleasure. Neal Swettenham lectures in drama at Loughborough University. His research into the role and status of narrative in contemporary theatre has led him to fresh examinations of both traditional story-based drama and avant-garde performance work. In particular, he has written about the plays of American dramatist Richard Foreman and is currently exploring the challenges presented to both actor and director by these texts.

scholarly journals Lazzaro Felice, el héroe santo de Alice Rohrwacher

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-158
Author(s):  
Teresa Rodríguez Hage ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Religious Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

Starting from the premise that Lazzaro Felice (2018) by the Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher is born from a vision of the world that has its roots in the Christian tradition and, therefore, is better understood from a religious perspective, we will study the different narrative and aesthetic aspects of the film, focusing on the creation of the central character, Lazarus, who, with a powerful spiritual charge of Christological resonances, is the essential key to the interpretation of the film. However, the religious approach is not limited to his figure, so we will also identify the numerous Christian references (iconographic, sound and narrative) recognizable in the staging and finally, we will discover some fragments of the film which reveals how, the director’s formal choices seek to translate into visual and sound language the presence of the sacred in everyday life.

The role of affect in feelings of obligation

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefen Beeler-Duden ◽  
Meltem Yucel ◽  
Amrisha Vaish
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Sense Of Obligation

Abstract Tomasello offers a compelling account of the emergence of humans’ sense of obligation. We suggest that more needs to be said about the role of affect in the creation of obligations. We also argue that positive emotions such as gratitude evolved to encourage individuals to fulfill cooperative obligations without the negative quality that Tomasello proposes is inherent in obligations.

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