Academic literature on the topic 'Self-(re)invention'

This chapter offers a wide-ranging reappraisal of the controversy provoked by the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway in the years 1844 to 1847. It re-examines Wordsworth’s motives for entering this controversy, the support and opposition he attracted, including some poetical ripostes, what he failed to see and where he was far-sighted. Frequently criticized as selfish, class-biased discrimination against mass-tourism, or welcomed as a dawn of modern environmentalism, Wordsworth’s anti-railway sonnets and letters published in the Morning Post were in fact more complex than has been supposed, and sometimes contradictory. Far from rejecting railways and technological invention, Wordsworth predicted a glorious future for steam power in terms that were, ironically, quickly appropriated by railway promoters to further their own aims. Ranging widely beyond the Kendal and Windermere Railway, the debate allowed Wordsworth to voice his opinions on scenery, transport, self-dependence, master-employee relations, local society and economy, aesthetics and prescient environmental considerations.

This chapter argues that mannerism and traditions of mannerist art give greater definition to how computer-animated films playfully dismantle their illusionist activity by making false claims about their relation to live-action cinema. To consider these specific forms of Mannerist humour in the computer-animated film, this chapter plots Mannerism’s cinematic lineage within certain styles and genres (film noir, pop music film, heritage drama, period film and cinéma du look), and notes that despite scholars having employed a vocabulary drawn from European art history to describe the (often digitally-assisted) bravura camerawork of New Hollywood cinema, Mannerism has yet to be employed as a descriptor for digital animation. This chapter therefore re-imagines computer-animated film comedy as strongly Mannerist in its invention, and draws particular attention to their strategies of allusive anti-illusionism. Computer-animated films frequently stage false, illusory discourses of revelation (feigned blooper reels, outtake material, behind-the-scenes ‘actor’ interviews) as a comic flourish that maintains the genre’s illusion. To interrogate the wit of the genre’s Mannerist play, I examine its many trompe-l’œil illusion effects and activities of self-deception.