The World in Play : Portraits of a Victorial Concept

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kaiser, Matthew.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Play in literature.

English literature.

Local Subjects:

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

Play in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (327 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [2012]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Nineteenth-century Britain was a world in play. The Victorians invented the weekend and built hundreds of parks and playgrounds. In the wake of Darwin, they re-imagined nature as a contest for survival. The playful child became a symbol of the future. A world in play means two things: a world in flux and a world trapped, like Alice in Wonderland, in a ludic microcosm of itself. The book explores the extent to which play (competition, leisure, mischief, luck, festivity, imagination) pervades nineteenth-century literature and culture and forms the foundations of the modern self. Pla

Contents:

Cover; Copyright; Title Page; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: A Modern Sensation; PART I The World in Play; 1 Mapping the World in Play; PART II Portraits; 2 Fair Play in an Ugly World: The Politics of Nautical Melodrama; 3 Toying with the Future in Wuthering Heights; 4 A Joy on the Precipice of Death: Muir and Stevenson in California; 5 Wilde's Folly; Notes; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780804778947

0804778949

OCLC:

779140180