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Performing Arts History & Criticism

Federico Fellini

Contemporary Perspectives

edited by Francis Burke & Marguerite R. Waller

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2002
Category
History & Criticism, Direction & Production, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802006967
    Publish Date
    Jun 2002
    List Price
    $107.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442674837
    Publish Date
    Jun 2002
    List Price
    $105.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802076472
    Publish Date
    Jun 2002
    List Price
    $49.95

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Description

Federico Fellini remains the best known of the postwar Italian directors. This collection of essays brings Fellini criticism up to date, employing a range of recent critical filters, including semiotic, psychoanalytical, feminist and deconstructionist. Accordingly, a number of important themes arise - the reception of fascism, the crisis of the subject, the question of agency, homo-eroticism, feminism, and constructions of gender.

Since the early 1970s, a slide in critical and theoretical attention to Fellini's work has corresponded with an assumption that his films are self-indulgent and lacking in political value. This volume moves the discussion towards a politics of signification, contending that Fellini's evolving self-reflexivity is not mere solipsism but rather a critique of both aesthetics and signification. The essays presented here are almost all new - the two exceptions being important signifiers in Fellini studies. The first, Frank Burke's "Federico Fellini: Reality/Representation/Signification" laid the foundation in the late 1980s for considering Fellini's work in the light of postmodernism. The second, Marguerite Waller's "Whose Dolce Vita is this Anyway?: The Language of Fellini's Cinema" (1990), provides a contemporary re-reading of Fellini's most successful film.

This lively and ambitious collection brings a new critical language to bear on Fellini's films, offering fresh insights into their underlying issues and meaning. In bringing Fellini criticism up to date, it will have a significant impact on film studies, reclaiming this important director for a contemporary audience.

About the authors

Frank Burke is Professor of Film Studies at Queen's University.

Francis Burke's profile page

Marguerite R. Waller is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of California, Riverside.

Marguerite R. Waller's profile page