“…Most of what I do in the following pages involves discussing examples of Old Testament narratives. I have tried to select examples from a broad range of possibilities. …”

Tabla de Contenidos: “…Acknowledgments ix Introduction The Spectacle of Inventing a Nation: World's Fairs and Their Narratives in Italy, 1860-1915 3 1 Prologues to World's Fairs: National Expositions and Nation Building in Turin 15 Turin, (Former) Capital of the Nineteenth Century 15 National Exhibits, Collective Identity, and the Ideology of Progress 19 Dreaming a Collective Dream: Civilization as Leisure 23 Of Maps and Towers: A Stroll along the Fairgrounds 33 Pro Aris et Foci: The King, the People, and the Nation 44 All the City's a Stage: The Exposition of Hegemonic Topographies in De Amicis's Torino 1880 52 Exhibition Mania on Stage: The Ballet Excelsior 65 2 Turin 1911: The 'Fabulous Exposition' 79 Ephemeral Architecture and the Invention of a National Style 79 Building Imperial Consensus: Italy's Quarta Sponda on the Po River 89 Italy and the Imperial Paradigm 102 Blazoned Pilots, Modern Media, and Vicarious Travels 110 Polar Explorers, 'Instant Books,' and the Politics of Travel 117 3 Emilio Salgari: Writing Exposition Style 123 Salgari's Novels as Exposition Narratives 123 Salgari and the Adventure-Tale Formula 136 A Life Exposed: The Man, the Myth, and the Nation 150 The Fall of a Crystal Palace: Le meraviglie delDuemila 166 4 Guido Gozzano's Imperial Ambiguities 176 Reclaiming the Context: On Gozzano gazzettiere and the Archaeology of Verso la cuna del mondo 176 The 'Compendium of the World': Gozzano's India as World's Fair Exhibit 184 Of Mazes and Masks: India as Counter-Exposition 192 Beyond the Exotic Surface: Gozzano's Letters as Hermeneutical Objects 202 Historiography as Assemblage: Intertextual Montages in 'L'Olocausto di Cawnepore' and 'Goa: "La Dourada"' 205 Meddling with the Sex of Angels: Gozzano's Readings of Albrecht Diirer's Melancholia I 248 Production for Profit and Creation for Pleasure: Beauty, Truth, and the Role of the Artist in the World of Universal Expositions 259 Conclusion 269 Notes 273 Bibliography 317…”
Reseña

“…Les industries culturelles intègrent le « grand public » partout dans le monde et le rêve qu'elles vendent semble être si attrayant que la narration « différente » passe inaperçue. - Contracub…”

“…Das Erzählen ist ein sozialer Austauschprozeß, denn jede Selbst-Narration muß von anderen bestätigt werden. Ein wichtiger Fokus von solchen Selbst-Erzählungen ist die zukunftsorientierte Formulierung von Identitätsprojekten. …”

Tabla de Contenidos: “…Madsen -- Acknowledgements -- Texts, translations, and abbreviations -- Introduction -- Character introductions -- Accession stories -- Warfare and battle narratives -- Trans-regnal themes -- The emperor's finale -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index Locorum -- Index Nominum et Rerum…”