Armadale. Wilkie Collins And The Dark Threads Of Life

This collection of essays aims to give cogency to the argument that Armadale is one of the greatest works by Wilkie Collins. The sixteen contributors approach the novel and its dramatic versions from different perspectives and, while exploring the meanderings of its plot, reflect on its provocative treatment of social and ethical issues. What emerges, from the ‘dialogues’ among essays, is the idea of a ‘dark’ palimpsestic text that Collins laboured to compose. Convoluted in its structure, thematically innovative and peopled with transgressive characters, Armadale bears witness to a literary experimentation that questioned a number of Victorian assumptions and, after one century and a half, poses fresh interpretative challenges to Collins scholars.Mariaconcetta Costantini is Associate Professor of English Literature at G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara, Italy. She is the author of Poesia e sovversione: Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins (2000), Behind the Mask: A Study of Ben Okri’s Fiction (2002), and Venturing into Unknown Waters: Wilkie Collins and the Challenge of Modernity (2008). Contributions by: Mariaconcetta Costantini, Francesco Marroni, Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, Sandro Jung, Natalie B. Cole, Raffaella Antinucci, Wendy Columbo, Andrew Mangham, Maurizio Ascari, John Woolford, Hyun–Jung Lee, Saverio Tomaiuolo, Franco Marucci, Massimo Verzella, Richard Pearson, Valentina Polcini.