Virtual play and the Victorian novel : the ethics and aesthetics of fictional experience / Timothy Gao, University of Sydney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gao, Timothy, 1993- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 127.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 127

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English fiction.

Reality in literature.

Imaginary places in literature.

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 222 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Pondering the town he had invented in his novels, Anthony Trollope had 'so realised the place, and the people, and the facts' of Barset that 'the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps'. After his novels end, William Thackeray wonders where his characters now live, and misses their conversation. How can we understand the novel as a form of artificial reality? Timothy Gao proposes a history of virtual realities, stemming from the imaginary worlds created by novelists like Trollope, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens. Departing from established historical or didactic understandings of Victorian fiction, Virtual Play and the Victorian Novel recovers the period's fascination with imagined places, people, and facts. This text provides a short history of virtual experiences in literature, four studies of major novelists, and an innovative approach for scholars and students to interpret realist fictions and fictional realities from before the digital age. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Contents:

Virtual, paracosmic, fictional

Authorship, omnipotence, and Charlotte Bronte

Plotting, improvisation, and Anthony Trollope

Continuation, attachment, and William Makepeace Thackeray

Description, projection, and Charles.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Apr 2021).

ISBN:

9781108944892

1108944892

9781108945653

1108945651

9781108938518

1108938515

OCLC:

1244620166