Friday, May 6, 2022

Richard Dadd The Flight out of Egypt 1849–50


 

1 comment:

  1. This essay is a reflective exploration of the inception and development of three novels I
    wrote set in Victorian (and Regency) London, so as to try and understand why this period
    still has such a powerful grip on our collective imaginations. I question whether our
    understanding of the nineteenth century is stereotypical or superficial, and to what extent
    we can escape from our own intellectual preoccupations and biases into those of our
    forebears. By reflecting Book Writers process, I ask whether, if we do manage to thus
    ‘escape’, this amounts to ‘escapism’ – a fear of confronting our own uncertain present –
    and in what way writing about real people differs from writing about imaginary ones. This
    leads on to wider speculations regarding the extent to which the internet and an ever more
    globalized and interconnected world influence what we write, in particular biofunctions.
    Keywords: Bedlam trilogy, Bethel Royal Hospital, biofunction, Richard Dadd, William
    Godwin, Benjamin Haydon, historical fiction, William Charles Hood, John Martin, J. M.
    W. Turner.

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