Show and/or tell: what is the role of historical dance in period cinema? And what memory of the history of dance are we left with?

To the often-studied relationship between dance and cinema, kindred arts of the moving body-moving image, I propose to add an original analysis of the relationship between the sub-genres of historical dance (in particular the social and theatrical dances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and period cinema. To that end, it is not only important to question the extent to which dance is merely illustrative, or serves as a narrative instrument in this type of films, but also how period cinema contributes to the construction of a historical memory of dance.There are several contexts that justify the introduction of a staged dance on film and they depend on a number of choices on the part of the artistic team. In period cinema these choices are particularly delicate, especially when the “world of the play” is relatively unconcerned with historical accuracy. Based on a selection of films including Valmont (1989), by Milos Forman, Jefferson in Paris (1995), by James Ivory, Le Roi danse (1999), by Gérard Corbiau, Marie Antoinette (2006), by Sofia Coppola, and Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos (2014), I analyse the criteria for the introduction of dance scenes, and reflect not only on their aesthetic and metaphorical effects, but also on their power of transmission, as well as of (de)construction, of a stereotype of historical dance.

Twenty-First-Century Readings of E.M. Forster's 'Maurice'

This is the first book-length study of Forster’s posthumously published novel. Nine essays focus exclusively on Maurice and its dynamic afterlives in literature, film and new media during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Begun in 1913 and revised over almost 50 years, Maurice became a defining text in Forster’s work and a canonical example of queer fiction. Yet the critical tendency to read Maurice primarily as a ‘revelation’ of Forster’s homosexuality has obscured important biographical, political and aesthetic contexts for this novel. This collection places Maurice among early twentieth-century debates about politics, philosophy, religion, gender, Aestheticism and allegory. Essays explore how the novel interacts with literary predecessors and contemporaries including John Bunyan, Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, and how it was shaped by personal relationships such as Forster’s friendship with Florence Barger. They close-read the textual variants of Forster’s manuscripts and examine the novel’s genesis and revisions. They consider the volatility of its reception, analysing how it galvanizes subsequent generations of writers and artists including Christopher Isherwood, Alan Hollinghurst, Damon Galgut, James Ivory, and twenty-first-century online fanfiction writers. What emerges from the volume is the complexity of the novel, as a text and as a cultural phenomenon.

Topos and chronos of English country houseat the beginning of the XXth century in literature and cinema(the novel “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro and a film by James Ivory)

The Stately-house novel takes a special place in the English classical literature. The estate here is of key importance in the image-structure of the work. The world of an English estate is reflected as a multi-faceted text, extremely enriched with cultural signs. Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro “The Remains of the Day” can be regarded as one of the examples of typical British aristocratic prose. The narrator and protagonist of the novel is a butler, who serves in the large English Stately home Darlington Hall. The family estate is considered by the hero as a symbol of order and harmony, and at the same time it personifies the ideal world of the past that is gradually fading away. In 1993 the director James Ivory made a film based on the Ishiguro’s novel. He created different visual images of an English estate on the screen with particular accuracy. Fictional Darlington Hall is a combination of several Stately homes located in the southwest of England. The novel by Kazuo Ishiguro and the film by J. Ivory are memories of a bygone era of British Empire, ended with the Second World War.

James Ivory's last papers on the ‘Figure of the Earth’ (with biographical additions)

Sir James Ivory, F.R.S. (1765–1842), was best known for his work on the gravitational attraction of ellipsoids, and the ‘Figure of the Earth’; a problem that attracted great attention. The mixed reception of Ivory's late work on this topic is examined. Although refereed fairly and favourably by George Biddell Airy, it was attacked by Isaac Todhunter long after Ivory's death. Further biographical information about James Ivory is given. This includes evidence that reveals the identity of his mother and shows that he was not born illegitimately, as I had claimed previously.