Venice and the Cultural Imagination: 'This Strange Dream upon the Water' - Hardcover

'The volume is handsomely made, generously illustrated, and well indexed ... there are astonishingly more subtle interconnections and interactions at work than initially imagined by the reader - and this is one of the book's greatest rewards and challenges ... a most vital addition towards the scholarly effort to establish the crucial role "Venice" played and continues to play in our understanding of art, nature, culture, and history.' European Romantic Review
'Brilliantly chosen, skilfully interwoven and consistently illuminating, this collection of essays does justice to its subject and represents a new high-water mark in interdisciplinary literary criticism. It is an essential companion-volume to Tony Tanner's "Venice Desired", sending its readers back to books, pictures music, and to the city itself.' BARS Bulletin

'O'Neill reads Browning with a poet's sensibility, a characteristic that is sometimes lacking in Browning criticism.' Victorian Poetry

'This collection of essays bring together detailed studies of different responses to the city ... captures something of the magic of Venice.' Victorian Studies

'explores the stylistic endeavours of Browning and Dickens in rendering their visions of Venice... illuminates connections between Dickens and Browning and brings to light the Venetian echoes in these poems.' The Year's Work in English Studies

'As the lecture series it is based on must have been, this book is itself very enjoyable. The essays have numerous insights to offer about both their immediate topics and those "themes central to Anglo-American and European culture" mentioned in the introduction, such as "the question of artistic and cultural legacies; the relative status of the ethical and the aesthetic; the relationship between home and abroad ... dream and reality, art and money, history and myth".' Byron Journal

'this enjoyable and informative volume undoubtedly achieves its aim of adding to our understanding of the history of European representations of Venice and of the key place occupied by the city in the European imagination-and it is all the more delightful for being interspersed with a generous range of images, and quotations from some of the greatest literary responses to the place Dickens famously dubbed a "strange Dream upon the water."' Notes and Queries

In the era of the Grand Tour, Venice was the cultural jewel in the crown of Europe and the epitome of decadence. Though visited by only the lucky few, its seductive charms were shared with those back home through the art and literature it inspired.

This edited collection draws on a range of disciplines and approaches to explore how Venice has been represented in Western culture since 1800. Essays from experts in their field consider the city's depiction in poetry, fiction, art, music and film. Beyond simply affirming the allure of Venice, this book functions as a case study with broader implications for the understanding of artistic and cultural legacies, and the relationships between art and money, history and myth.