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La riscoperta dell’ozio nella letteratura inglese di fine Ottocento: Robert Louis Stevenson, Jerome K. Jerome, Oscar Wilde

  • Federico Bellini

The Victorian era is often considered to have been dominated by the 'Gospel of work', that is, the ideology that identified work as one of the supreme virtues. However, starting from about the 1870s, this ideology started to be more and more radically questioned by several writers who claimed in favour of idleness. In this essay, I analyse and compare three of the most relevant British partisans of idleness of the period – Robert Louis Stevenson, Jerome K. Jerome and Oscar Wilde –, in order to show how idleness played a key role in the development of their poetic and how they contributed to its reevaluation as an alternative value for the modern times.

  • Keywords:
  • Idleness,
  • work,
  • Stevenson Robert Louis,
  • Jerome K. Jerome,
  • Oscar Wilde,
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Federico Bellini

Catholic University of Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-8434-0384

  1. Ambrosini, Richard. 2001. R. L. Stevenson. La poetica del Romanzo. Roma: Bulzoni.
  2. Arata, Stephen. 2006. “Stevenson, Morris, and the Value of Idleness.” In Robert Louis Stevenson Writer of Boundaries, a cura di Richard Ambrosini e Richard Dury, 3-12. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
  3. Bellini, Federico. 2017. La saggezza dei pigri. Figure di rifiuto del lavoro in Melville, Conrad e Beckett. Milano: Mimesis.
  4. Calvino, Italo. 1995. Saggi, 2 voll. Milano: Mondadori.
  5. Conrad, Joseph. 2004. Notes on Life and Letters, edited by H. J. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. Conrad, Joseph. 2010. Youth; Heart of Darkness; The End of the Tether, edited by Owen Knowles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  7. Jerome, Jerome K. 1979. Three Men on a Boat. To Say Nothing of the Dog! Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  8. Jerome, Jerome K. s. d. The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow: Book For An Idle Holiday. London: Field & Tuer.
  9. Korte, Barbara. 2014. “Against Busyness: Idling in Victorian and Contemporary Travel Writing.” In Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi, Idleness, Indolence, and Leisure in English Literature, 215-34. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  10. Liedke, Heidi. 2018. The Experience of Idling in Victorian Travel Texts 1850-1901. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  11. Russell, Bertrand. 1935. In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: Allen and Unwin.
  12. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 2018. Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, edited by Robert-Louis Abrahamson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  13. Wilde, Oscar. 1975. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. London: Collins.
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  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Pages: 687-696
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

La riscoperta dell’ozio nella letteratura inglese di fine Ottocento: Robert Louis Stevenson, Jerome K. Jerome, Oscar Wilde

Authors

Federico Bellini

Language

Italian

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0319-7.79

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Idee di lavoro e di ozio per la nostra civiltà

Editors

Giovanni Mari, Francesco Ammannati, Stefano Brogi, Tiziana Faitini, Arianna Fermani, Francesco Seghezzi, Annalisa Tonarelli

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

1894

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0319-7

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0245-9

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0319-7

eISBN (epub)

979-12-215-0320-3

Series Title

Studi e saggi

Series ISSN

2704-6478

Series E-ISSN

2704-5919

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