Christina Rossetti, Jean Ingelow and JULIANA h. Ewing: their lives and critical fortune

• Grant number: 15/22913-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: March 14, 2016
• End date: June 13, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Cleide Antonia Rapucci
• Grantee: Guilherme Magri da Rocha
• Supervisor: Maura Ives
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Texas A&M University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/21627-4 - Flora, Jack and Amelia: alternative Alices by victorian women writers, BP.MS

Abstract

Published in the shadows of the didactic and often religious children's texts by theorists, the Rousseausists and the early Victorians, Lewis Carroll's Alice books were instantaneous successes. In our Master's degree project (Fapesp process number 2014/21627-4) we propose a possibility of reading three of the Alice's hypertexts collected by Sigler (1997): Speaking Likenesses, published by Christina Rossetti in 1874, Mopsa, the fairy published by Jean Ingelow in 1869, and Amelia and the dwarfs, published by Juliana H. Ewing in 1870. Bibliography on these women authors in Brazil is very rare and generic. There are zero works on Ingelow and on Ewing in the libraries of São Paulo University and this number repeats itself on São Paulo State University's and University of Campinas' databases, for instance. These books do offer "fascinating insights into the cultural and literary situations in which the Alice books have been understood and appropriated by different audiences" (SIGLER, 1997, page xviii). Besides that, they "illuminate how diversely the Alice narratives, as both literary and ideological commodities, were interpreted, expropriated, and converted in both critical and affirming ways to question those same situations" (id.) and the representations of the female protagonist herself. This scholarship will make possible our access to critical studies and publications on these foundational works. We believe our work may open new avenues of research into writers who have received little attention within and outside Brazil. The objectives of this study are: to extend the scope not only of children's literature studies in Brazil, but also of Victorian women writers; to deepen studies about Christina Rossetti, Jean Ingelow and Juliana H. Ewing; to introduce Christina Rossetti, Jean Ingelow and Juliana H. Ewing to the Brazilian readers through a short biography; to collect data on the critical fortune of Speaking likenesses, Mopsa, the fairy and Amelia and the dwarfs through the access of articles, books, and original publications of Texas A&M University's library and surrounding libraries (if possible). We also believe our study may broaden horizons of Brazilian scholars, students and readers of children's literature, English literature, Victorian literature, and women writers. (AU)