Caleb Williams, o l’umamanità divisa: letteratura e politica in William Godwin

Storico dai molteplici interessi, bibliotecario, musicista, uomo di cultura e grande modernista, studioso, in particolare, dell’Italia settecentesca, Calogero Farinella ci ha prematuramente lasciati nel giugno del 2019, a poco più di sessanta anni. Le sue pubblicazioni sulla Genova del Settecento e sulla scienza illuminista (veronese specialmente: Francesco Bianchini, Anton Mario Lorgna e l’Accademia dei Quaranta) fanno e faranno sempre data negli studi di storia della cultura. Allievo tra i più brillanti di Salvatore Rotta (1926-2001), dal quale mutuò la passione per il XVIII secolo in particolare, Farinella si laureò sotto la sua guida su William Godwin (1756-1836), padre di Mary Shelley, filosofo e scrittore politico di area libertaria, che, con la sua fondamentale opera, marchia a fuoco il passaggio, in Gran Bretagna, dai Lumi al Romanticismo. Sulla figura e gli scritti di Godwin, ricavandoli dalla propria dissertazione di laurea, Farinella estrasse e pubblicò, negli anni Ottanta del secolo scorso, due articoli, apparsi nel volume della «Miscellanea storica ligure» contenente gli Studi in onore di Francesco Cataluccio (William Godwin ed il suo Journal all’epoca della Rivoluzione Francese, xv, 1984), e poi su Studi settecenteschi (Il governo più semplice. Il mito democratico-repubblicano in William Godwin, viii, 1987). Un terzo ampio articolo, che contiene spunti davvero interessanti sul romanzo utopistico di Godwin, rimase inedito, sino a oggi, malgrado l’oggettivo e rilevante valore del contributo di Farinella. Crediamo, pertanto, di fare cosa gradita alla memoria dell’amico e dello studioso pubblicandolo per la prima volta, in questa sede.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley conceived of the central idea for Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus—most often referred to simply as Frankenstein—during the summer of 1816 while vacationing on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It is her first and most famous novel. Although the assertion is debatable, some scholars have argued that Frankenstein is the first work of modern science fiction. Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein in response to a “ghost story” writing contest between herself, Percy Shelley, Percy Shelley’s physician and friend John Polidori, and Lord Byron, who were trapped indoors reading German ghost stories as the result of inclement weather. Polidori’s contribution to this contest, “The Vampyre: A Tale” (1819), influenced the development of Gothic literature. According to Shelley, she drew inspiration from a nightmare she had, which she attributed to discussions she overheard between Percy and Byron regarding experiments with electricity and animation. Shelley began working on the novel when she returned home to England in September, and the book’s first edition was published anonymously in 1818. Shelley’s father William Godwin made minor revisions for a second edition in 1821; and Shelley herself made more substantial changes for the third edition in 1831. The story is told through an epistolary frame, and follows Victor Frankenstein, a university student of the “unhallowed arts” who assembles, animates, and abandons an unnamed human-like creature. The creature goes on to haunt his creator both literally and metaphorically. Over the past two hundred years, the story has been widely influential, and re-interpreted in various forms of culture and media. In literary studies, scholars have discussed which edition of the text is the “truest” to Mary Shelley’s intended vision. The novel has been analyzed for its messages about human pride and hubris, the pursuit of knowledge, the nature/nurture question, as put forth by Rousseau, ethical questions in medicine and science, and family, gender, and reproduction, among other topics.

UM MONSTRO CHAMADO SOCIEDADE: DO GÓTICO POLÍTICO À DISTOPIA

O gótico é indissociável do contexto político em que surge, e permanece, ao longo de sua trajetória, em diálogo com questões relacionadas a poder, controle e transgressão. Não obstante, há momentos em que comentários sociopolíticos assumem protagonismo e os mecanismos do gótico ganham fins retóricos para além da narrativa em si. Caleb Williams, de William Godwin, pode ser tomado como uma das primeiras manifestações desse uso do gótico, em que Fred Botting ressalta a construção de um Estado monstruoso e os horrores da opressão criada por uma justiça corrupta, e que David Punter chamará de “Political Gothic”. Apresenta-se, aqui, a hipótese de que os temas e estratégias presentes nesse uso do gótico se aplicariam também a outro gênero profundamente engajado com seu contexto político-social, a distopia. Buscamos, assim, apresentar como a ficção distópica dá continuidade a essa tradição de representações monstruosas da sociedade.

Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespear (1810)

Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespear (1810), with its facing frontispiece engraved from William Mulready's designs by William Blake. This book has not been out of print since its first appearance. The second edition was published by Mary Jane Godwin, the wife of Lamb's close friend the philosopher and novelist William Godwin.

As "Men of Sense": Godwin, Baroja, Bateson and Hume's "Of National Characters"

Men of sense, Hume says, condemn the extreme undistinguishing judgments concerning national characters; yet, he adds, they also allow that each nation has a national character or a peculiar set of resembling manners. Hume's "Of national characters" was published at the end of 1748 in unclear circumstances, but it is still the object of several discussions for different reasons. William Godwin, Julio Caro Baroja and Gregory Bateson seem to refer to it, even though only the first two acknowledge it. Godwin uses it as a weapon to attack the climatic theory in the service of tyranny; Baroja as a sceptical solvent to destroy all mythical national character and real national prejudice; Bateson as a model to delineate an abstract frame for the research on national differences. Since, as Hume warns us, we run with avidity to give our evidence to what flatters our national prejudices and, as Mary Wollstonecraft denounces, we are eager to give a national character to every people, "Of National Characters" still provides us with acute and instructive remarks: to speak of national characters does not necessarily means that we are speaking in favour of nationalism and against the individuals.

FEATURES OF SENTIMENTALISM IN THE PASTORAL NOVEL OF WILLIAM GODWIN "IMOGEN"

The subject of the article is the peculiarities of sentimentalism in one of W. Godwin's early novels "Imogen". The author comes to the conclusion that, relying on the traditional understanding of sentimental pastoralism (the leading role of nature in the "bucolic" or "Georgian" understanding, the use of a pastoral chronotope, idealization of the pastoral lifestyle, the depiction of platonic feelings between heroes, the presence of pastoral conflicts), W. Godwin uses these features as a background to illustrate his socio-political ideas. He widely uses the technique of contrast, building a system of conflicts on its basis, complicates the nature of the characters and the relationships between them, making them more contradictory, and experiments with style and genre canons. As a result, the originality of the author's perception of sentimentalism in the pastoral novel "Imogen" lies in the mixture of typically sentimental features and the author's specific socio-political worldview. In addition, while writing the novel, the writer's style is still in development, which also leaves an imprint on the manifestation of a sentimental basis in the work.

William Godwin (1756 - 1836)

Portrait of William Godwin, novelist and political philosopher, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley