In Sarah Dunant’s recent In the Company of the Courtesan, Venice becomes the refuge of a courtesan and a dwarf who flee the 1527 sack of Rome and the brutality that accompanies all such aggressive conquests. The seductive and intoxicating city becomes then a destination configured both by need and desire, an exile for those who prefer freedom to confinement. The erotics of escape and metamorphosis are played out alongside serious considerations of censorship and contingency, a tantalizing combination within the genre of the historical novel.
I am writing a novel about a historical character who struggles with the meaning of both freedom and confinement on the Canadian prairie. While I cannot logically send my fictional character into exile in Venice, similar threads of privacy and concealment play very much into her historical reincarnation. She grapples with the daily brutality that curtails her freedom and dreams of being able to find a refuge rich in art and culture.
I would like, for this conference, to offer a ficto-critical cross-evocation that works between these two fictional women and their imbricated quest for freedom, of person and of imagination. Within their very different historical moments, they speak to a strangely similar subjugation, and the carnalities of survival within a hostile and complex world.