The relation between narration and history from the perspective of the twentieth century - the century of criticisms - suggests a new outlook fit for the new millennium. We can no longer look at history and historiography naively, but must be aware of the rhetorical strategies that are at work in the writing. A research group based in Milan has been working on this topic for a few years, discussing authors and texts from different genres and epochs. The essays presented here deal with texts chosen because of their intrinsic relevance to the history of English-speaking cultures and recent critical perspectives - largely, but not exclusively, indebted to Hayden White. Thus the volume considers instances of narrativity and historical discourse in authors as diverse as S. Johnson, E. Chambers, C. Hill, J. Raban, V. Woolf, N. Mitchison, V. S. Naipaul, S. Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee, A. Ghosh.
About the Author: Marialuisa Bignami, Professor of English Literature at the Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy, is the author of three volumes, respectively on the rise of English Journalism, on Daniel Defoe's narratives and on English literary utopias. She is also the author of numerous essays on the prose and poetry of John Milton and on narrative topics and their modern development: in particular on Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, James Hogg, George Eliot, Samuel Butler, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Iris Murdoch. Francesca Orestano, Professor of English Literature at the Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy, works on the connections between literature and aesthetics; the picturesque and visual culture; modernism; children's literature; and landscape gardening. Her recent publications include essays on Dickens, Ruskin, and Virginia Woolf. She is editor of Strange Sisters: Literature and Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century (2009) and Dickens and Italy, with Michael Hollington (2010). Alessandro Vescovi teaches English Literature at Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy. His field of interest includes Dickens and the Indian novel in English. He has authored a book on short story theory (Dal focolare allo scrittoio, 1999) and coedited two volumes on Dickens and the Victorians (Dickens the Craft of Fiction, 2000; Victorians and Italy, 2009). He has published articles on R. K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, on whom he is currently completing a monograph.