LibGuides: English: The Passion

Useful Links

Jeanette Winterson's website: The Passion
Why did you set the book in the Napoleonic Wars? "All of my work, including Oranges, manipulates history. The past is not sacred. The past is not static. There are a few facts we can rely on – dates, places, people, but the rest is interpretation and imagination. I like that freedom. I liked the idea of setting an intensely personal story against a brutal impersonal background. Anyway, Napoleon has always fascinated me, probably because he was short. The real answer to why is not a fact it’s a fiction. It wasn’t an objective choice, it was a hunch. I hadn’t been to Venice when I wrote about it – which is perfect because Venice doesn’t really exist." - Jeanette Winterson
Review: Passion, Obsession and Napoleon - Cannonball Read
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion is a novel about passions, obsessions, and madness. Using her characters, history, and geography, Winterson examines how passion develops among “lukewarm people” and how it can bleed over into debilitating obsession and the loss of self. Some can find their way back from it, others cannot.
Jeanette Winterson - Biography
The British Council Literature website provides a biography of Jeanette Winterson, as well as a critical perspective of her body of work, and her publishing and award history.
Video: An Evening with Jeanette Winterson (Ideas at the House)
Jeanette Winterson OBE is one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Across novels, screenplays, essays and journalism, Winterson has taken risks and challenged us to think differently about identity and relationships. She discusses the notion of linear time and non-linear time, particularly in relation to reading and memory - this might be useful to think about in your exploration of The Passion. Duration: 1 hr, 20 mins. Via YouTube.
Video: Jeanette Winterson at Sydney Opera House for Sydney Writers' Festival 2012
Jeanette Winterson reads from her new memoir "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" and talks about books, life, love, madness and creativity. Winterson is a very engaging speaker and while this video doesn't specifically discuss The Passion, it is useful to get an insight into Winterson's worldview. Duration: 1hr. Via YouTube.
Profile: Jeanette Winterson - The Guardian
Winterson became a full-time writer with The Passion (1987), set partly in Venice, which she had never seen, aiming to create "cities of language, where the coin was not money [but] emotion". She says: "I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break. To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language. I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks." The form was non-linear ("Our mental processes are closer to a maze than a motorway") and the style playful and aphoristic: "What you risk reveals what you value"; "I'm telling you stories. Trust me."

Context: Venice

Venice by Veronique Lafleche; Andrea Luppi (Photographer)
ISBN: 9781859957653
Publication Date: 2000-06-01

Napoleon the first dissolved the old republic of Venice because the city's political and military power had dissipated. Thereafter, Venice rested, peacefully, on the laurels of its glorious past. Now, at the dawn of a new millennium, Venice remains a vast living museum. Since the Romantic period, poets, writers, and musicians, have visited this city of love, palaces, churches, and canals in search of inspiration. This richly-illustrated book guides the reader on a seductively beautiful path through one of the most beautiful cities of the western hemisphere, a city that appears to have emerged wondrously from the depths of the sea.

Encyclopedia Britannica: Venice
This article provides a good introduction to Venice, including the physical and human geography as well as the city's history. Scroll down to read about the end of the Venetian republic and the beginning of unified Italy - which is around the historical time-period The Passion is set.

Video: Italy's Invisible Cities - Venice

Alexander Armstrong and Dr Michael Scott explore the watery wonderland of Venice & uncover how a city built in a swamp became one of the most powerful in medieval Europe. Produced by the BBC. Duration: 58:49. Via ClickView (login required).

Context: Napoleon

Encyclopedia Britannica: Napoleon
Provides an introduction to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) and a summary of the various military campaigns that he waged across Europe in his effort to build an empire.
Encyclopedia Britannica: Napoleon (higher reading level)
This is a more detailed version of the above article - if you want a deeper understanding of the Napoleonic wars, which provide a backdrop for part of The Passion.

France and the Age of Revolution (ebook) by William Doyle
ISBN: 9780857722355
Publication Date: 2013-07-01

Part 3 of this book explores Napoleon, where the author takes a fresh look at the Napoleonic Empire, considering the influences on Napoleon's leadership decisions and the machinations of his court. The writing style is very readable, so take a look if you want some insight into Napoleon's influence on nobility or his relationship to women and revolution.

Video: Warriors - Napoleon

Tells how Napoleon Bonaparte rose from being a penniless French soldier to create an empire, beginning at the siege of Toulon in 1793 where France's leaders first recognised his tactical genius, immense bravery and boundless ambition as he defeated the English. Shot in authentic locations using a script based on documents from the time, including Napoleon's own letters, the film has been written with the advice of modern historians. Stars Tom Burke and Rob Brydon. The is quite entertaining and informative - if you can look past the scripted dialogue which is in English, with British accents, instead of the original French.

Duration: 49:22. Via ClickView (login required).

Books available in the LRC

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
ISBN: 9780099598329

The Passion is one of Winterson's most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, the novel intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.
The Passion (ebook) by Jeanette Winterson
ISBN: 9781448113361

Henri had a passion for Napoleon and Napoleon had a passion for chicken. From Boulogne to Moscow Henri butchered for his Emperor and never killed a single man. Meanwhile, in Venice, the city of chance and disguises, Villanelle was born with the webbed feet of her boatman father - but in the casinos she gambled her heart and lost. As the soldier-chef's love for Napoleon turns to hate he finds the Venetian beauty, and together they flee to the canals of darkness.
Different Genres and Literary Elements in Jeanette Wintersons 'the Passion' (ebook) by Anne-Kathrin Wilde
ISBN: 9783640370214

Seminar paper: Jeanette Winterson's novels are a combination of history, fictional stories, fairy-tales and female romance. She has an experimental style which approaches many readers in particular women. The genre could be called post-modern fiction as it shows a lot of post-modern writing techniques such as intertextuality, parody, self-reflectivity and the rewriting of history. In this paper the different literary genres which Jeanette Winterson knows to combine should be presented by the example of the novel The Passion, written in 1987. Using literary devices, generic details should be analysed which make it possible to categorize The Passion according to the different genres.

Also by Jeanette Winterson

Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson
ISBN: 9780747580645
Publication Date: 2006

A little way in the future, time is distorting. Time Tornadoes are causing havoc. People are whirled out of their own time, never to return and a woolly mammoth has been seen on the banks of the River Thames. But time is big business, and who ever gets control of time, controls life as we know it!
Land by Jeanette Winterson; Antony Gormley; Clare Richardson; Landmark Trust (Great Britain),
ISBN: 9781526201850

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Landmark Trust commissioned an installation from Antony Gormley. LAND was the result: this book records its places and explores their meanings. Author Jeanette Winterson and photographer Clare Richardson travelled to five Landmark sites in remote parts of the British Isles to see Gormley's life-size cast iron sculptures. Winterson has written a meditation in response to the works and landscapes she has encountered.

English: The Passion