Rebecca West, Creepy Venice: Thomas Mann, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Ian McEwan

"Creepy Venice: Thomas Mann, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Ian McEwan" University of Chicago October 20, 2018 Rebecca West, William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Cinema and Media Studies Venice is Italy's honeymoon city, a lushly romantic floating dream of gently gliding gondolas and quaint traffic-free streets and squares through which to meander. Some writers and film directors, however, have captured another dark, dangerous, and even positively macabre Venice. From Thomas Mann's infected city (Death in Venice) to Daphne du Maurier's haunted site of both past and future loss (Don't Look Now); from Patricia Highsmith's labyrinth in which a deadly cat-and-mouse game is carried out (Those Who Walk Away) to Ian McEwan's setting for erotic menace (The Comfort of Strangers), these books and film adaptations—of all but Highsmith's novel—give us a creepy Venice distinctly at odds with its image as a city for lovers. Let's explore the how and why of this alternative imagining of the Serenissima, Queen of the Adriatic. Rebecca West taught courses and wrote scholarly books and articles on modern Italian literature, literary texts by women authors, and on film adaptation, among other cinema topics, for 40 years until her retirement in 2013. One of her current projects focuses on Patricia Highsmith's novels that are set in Italy. West is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Cinema and Media Studies. If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to [email protected].