Victorian literary cultures : studies in textual subversion / edited by Kenneth Womack and James M. Decker.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Womack, Kenneth, editor.

Decker, James M., 1967- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Great Britain.

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 202 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion provides readers with close textual analyses regarding the role of subversive acts or tendencies in Victorian literature. By drawing clear cultural contexts for the works under review-including such canonical texts as Dracula, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, and stories featuring Sherlock Holmes-the critics in this anthology offer groundbreaking studies of subversion as a literary motif. For some late nineteenth-century British novelists, subversion was a central aspect of their writerly existence. Although-or perhaps because-most Victorian authors composed their works for a general and mixed audience, many writers employed strategies designed to subvert genteel expectations. In addition to using coded and oblique subject matter, such figures also hid their transgressive material "in plain sight." While some writers sought to critique and even destabilize their society, others juxtaposed subversive themes and aesthetics negatively with communal norms in hopes of quashing progressive agendas. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Subversive Women 1

1 The Mysterious Identity of Helen Dickens, Victorian Novelist / Troy J. Bassett Bassett, Troy J. 3

2 Moonrise and the Ascent of Eve, the Woman Titan: Charlotte Brontë's Epiphanies of the Fourfold Elemental Feminine / Martin Sidney Sidney, Martin 21

3 Condoning Adultery: Problems of Marriage and Divorce in George Eliot's Life and Writing / Nancy Henry Henry, Nancy 45

Part II Subversive Ideologies 63

4 Unraveling Orientalism: Dawe's "Yellow and White" / James M. Decker Decker, James M. 65

5 "A familiar kinde of chastisement": Fasting in the Nineteenth-Century / Joseph Lennon Lennon, Joseph 77

6 The Effect of Emerging New Media on Book Publishing: Lessons from the Origins of Cross-Media Storytelling in the Early Twentieth Century for Contemporary Transmedia Researchers / Alexis Weedon Weedon, Alexis 101

7 "And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth": Reading Levinasian Ethics and Literary Impressionism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness / Kenneth Womack Womack, Kenneth 115

Part III Subversive Genres 127

8 "Count me in": Comedy in Dracula / Ira B. Nadel Nadel, Ira B. 129

9 "The seasoned spirit of the cunning reader": The Textual Subversions of The Turn of the Screw / Ruth Robbins Robbins, Ruth 153

10 "Fallen" Clergymen: The Wages of Sin in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, and Henry Arthur Jones's Michael and His Lost Angel / Jeanette Shumaker Shumaker, Jeanette 165

11 Sherlock Holmes: The Criminal in the Detective / Joseph Wiesenfarth Wiesenfarth, Joseph 187.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781611476644

161147664X

OCLC:

964660275