British literature and the life of institutions : speculative states / Benjamin Kohlmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kohlmann, Benjamin, 1981- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

English literature--20th century--History and cricitism.

Social problems in literature.

Welfare state in literature.

Economics in literature.

State, The, in literature.

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

Literature and society.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (281 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Summary:

"Speculative States pursues two related goals, one reconstructive and literary-historical, the other conceptual. First, the book restores to view literature's engagements with the slow politics of reform by linking the development of the institutional forms of the state to the aesthetic forms of literary writing. In doing so, it maps out a literary prehistory of the welfare state in Britain that spans the late Victorian and modernist periods. Second, the book also makes visible an ambitious reformist idiom which insists that we think about the state as an aspirational (speculative) figure--as a form of life in its own right rather than as a set of detached administrative procedures and bureaucratic processes. Placing literary studies in dialogue with political theory, philosophy, and the history of ideas, Speculative States marks a major contribution to current debates about literature and the state, but it also centrally intervenes in conversations in critical theory by urging a fuller engagement with the critical and speculative dimensions of the dialectical imagination"--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Front Matter

Introduction: Thinking the State (Again)

1. Literature as Speculative Thought: Britain's Long Hegelian Moment, c.1900

2. 'The Hope of Pessimism': George Gissing, Mary Ward, and the Idea of an Institution

3. 'True Ownership': Edward Carpenter and the Nationalization of Land

4. 'Kinetic' Reform: H. G. Wells and Redistributive Taxation

5. Welfare State Romance: E. M. Forster and Unemployment Insurance

Coda: Reformist Legacies

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on November 16, 2021).

This edition also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Kohlmann, Benjamin, 1981- British literature and the life of institutions.

ISBN:

0-19-257318-7

0-19-194558-7