Chronometres : devotional literature, duration, and Victorian reading / Krista Lysack.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lysack, Krista, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Books and reading.

Christian literature, English--History and criticism.

Christian literature, English.

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

English literature.

Devotional literature, English--History and criticism.

Devotional literature, English.

Reading--Great Britain--19th century.

Reading.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

vi, 229 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Devotional literature, duration, and Victorian reading

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Summary:

What does it mean to feel time, to sense its passing along the sinews and nerves of the body as much as the synapses of the mind? And how do books, as material arrangements of print and paper, mediate such temporal experiences? Chronometres: Devotional Literature, Duration, and Victorian Reading Culture is a study of the time-inflected reading practices of religious literature, the single largest market for print in Victorian Britain. It examines poeticcycles by John Keble, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and Frances Ridley Havergal; family prayer manuals, Sunday-reading books and periodicals; and devotional gift books and daily textbooks. Designed for diurnal and weekly reading, chronometrical literature tuned its readers' attentions to the idea ofeternity and the everlasting peace of spiritual transcendence, but only in so far as it parcelled out reading into discrete increments that resembled the new industrial time-scales of factories and railway schedules. Chronometres thus takes up print culture, affect theory, and the religious turn in literary studies in order to explore the intersections between devotional practice and the condition of modernity. It argues that what defines Victorian devotional literature is theexperience of its time signatures, those structures of feeling associated with its reading durations. 0For many Victorians, reading devotionally increasingly meant reading in regular portions and often according to the calendar and work-day in contrast to the liturgical year. Keeping pace with the temporal measures of modernity, devotion became a routinized practice: a way of synchronizing the interior life of spirit with the exigencies of clock time.

Contents:

Part I Devotional Books in Time

1 The Christian Year and the Consolations of Synchronized Time p. 29

2 Christina Rossetti's Chronometrical Eternal p. 55

Part II The Form and Feel of Devotional Reading

3 Family Prayers: Devotional Daydreaming, Household Time, and the Labours of Attention p. 79

4 Sunday Reading: Boredom, Leisure, and Periodical Diversion p. 105

Part III Material Devotions and the Devotional Day

5 Arranging Daily Gifts of Devotion: Frances Ridley Havergal's Botanical Book Craft p. 139

6 Apportioning the Devotional Day: Daily Textbooks, Reading Systems, and In Memoriam A.H.H. p. 160.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-220) and index.

ISBN:

0198836163

9780198836162

OCLC:

1088522729