Email this article La complessità del diverso nella piattezza di Flatland
Abstract
Abstract – This paper proposes an analysis of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions (1884). In particular, it focuses on the first section of the novel, This World, which is interpreted as a satire of the Victorian society. In fact, the fictional world of Flatland appears to have been built exactly upon the middle class ideological standpoint. This is ironically translated into a series of strategies – both at a territorial and at a relational level – through which this group tries to maintain its hegemonic social position and, at the same time, to distance all those elements that may deviate from its image of respectability. This is investigated with special regard to the characters of the Irregular and of the isosceles triangle, towards which the middle class shows an attitude of closure. Such behaviour is nothing else but the satirical depiction of its ambiguous relationship with Otherness.
Sommario – Questo saggio propone un’analisi di Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) di Edwin Abbott Abbott. Nello specifico, esso si sofferma sulla prima sezione del romanzo, This World, interpretata quale satira della società vittoriana. Difatti, il mondo fantastico di Flatland sembra essere stato costruito proprio sulla base dell’ideologia della middle class, che è ironicamente tradotta in una serie di strategie – su un piano sia territoriale sia relazionale – tramite le quali questo gruppo tenta di mantenere l’egemonia della sua posizione sociale e, al contempo, di allontanare tutti quegli elementi che potrebbero deviare dalla sua immagine di rispettabilità. Ciò è esaminato con particolare riferimento ai personaggi dell’Irregolare e del triangolo isoscele, verso i quali la middle class mostra un atteggiamento di chiusura. Tale comportamento non è altro che la satirica raffigurazione del suo ambiguo rapporto con l’Alterità.
References
Abbott E.A. 2006, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York.
Armstrong D. 1983, Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in Britain in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Baker Whelan L. 2010, Class, Culture and Suburban Anxieties in the Victorian Era, Routledge, New York/London.
Banchoff T.F. 1990, From Flatland to Hypergraphics: Interacting with Higher Dimensions, in “Interdisciplinary Science Reviews” 15 [4], pp. 364-372. http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/ISR/ISR.html (18.04.2014).
Banchoff T.F. 1991, Flatland: A New Introduction, in Abbott E.A., Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Princeton University Press, Princeton. http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/abbott/Flatland/Publications/intros/banchoff.pdf (14.04.2014).
Banchoff T.F. 2004, The Fourth Dimension and the Theology of Edwin Abbott Abbott, in “Journal of the ACMS” - Inaugural issue. http://www.acmsonline.org/journal/2004/Banchoff-The%204th%20dimention.pdf (15.04.2014).
Banchoff T.F., Contemporary Reviews of Flatland, in http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/abbott/Flatland/Reviews/index.shtml (18.11.2014).
Bleiler E.F. (ass. by Bleiler R.) 1990, Science-Fiction, the Early Years: a Full Description of More than 3,000 Science-Fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazine in 1930 with Author, Title, and Motif Indexes, Kent State University Press, Kent (Ohio).
Buckley J.H. 1981, The Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Craton L.E. 2009, The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Differences in 19th-Century Fiction, Cambria Press, Amherst (New York).
Foucault M. 1975, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison, Gallimar, Paris; Eng. trans. by Sheridan A. 1995, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage Books, New York/Toronto.
Germ Dissemination 1925, in “Notes, Comments, and Abstracts”, pp. 903-904, in “The Lancet” 205 [5304], Elsevier Ltd., p. 904. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673601223563 (16.12.2014).
Gilbert P.K. 2004, Mapping the Victorian Social Body, State University of New York Press, Albany (New York).
Guy J.M. (ed.) 1998, The Victorian Age: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, Routledge, London/New York.
Jann R. 1985, Abbott’s “Flatland”: Scientific Imagination and “Natural Christianity”, in “Victorian Studies” 28 [3], pp. 473-490.
Jann R. 2006, Introduction, in Abbott E.A., Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, pp. vii-xxxiii.
Lamarck J.-B. de 1809, Philosophie Zoologique, ou Exposition des Considérations Relatives à l'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux, Dentu, Paris; Eng. trans. by Elliot H. 1963, Zoological Philosophy: An Exposition with Regard to the Natural History of Animals, Hafner Publishing Company, New York/London.
Lupton D. 2003, Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies, SAGE Publications Ltd., London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi.
Porter D. 1999, Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times, Routledge, London/New York.
Smith J. 1994, Fact & Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, The University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin.
Smith J., Berkove L.I. and Baker G.A. 1996, A Grammar of Dissent: “Flatland”, Newman, and the Theology of Probability, in “Victorian Studies” 39 [2], pp. 129-150.
Spencer H. 1860, The Social Organism, in Spencer H. 1865, Illustrations of Universal Progress: a Series of Discussions, D. Appleton and Company, New York, pp. 384-428.
Spencer H. 2009a, First Principles, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Spencer H. 2009b, Social Statics Abridged and Revised Together with the Man Versus the State, Bibliobazaar, Charleston.
Stallybrass P. and White A. 1986, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Cornell University Press, Ithaca/New York.
Suvin D. 1979, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, Yale University Press, New Haven/London.
Thompson F.M.L. 1988, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Westfahl G. (ed.) 2005, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works and Wonders, Vol. III, Greenwood Press, Westport.
Full Text: pdf
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
