Relics of death in Victorian literature and culture / Deborah Lutz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lutz, Deborah, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Death in literature.

Relics in literature.

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

Literature and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 244 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Relics of Death in Victorian Literature & Culture

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Nineteenth-century Britons treasured objects of daily life that had once belonged to their dead. The love of these keepsakes, which included hair, teeth, and other remains, speaks of an intimacy with the body and death, a way of understanding absence through its materials, which is less widely felt today. Deborah Lutz analyzes relic culture as an affirmation that objects held memories and told stories. These practices show a belief in keeping death vitally intertwined with life - not as memento mori but rather as respecting the singularity of unique beings. In a consumer culture in full swing by the 1850s, keepsakes of loved ones stood out as non-reproducible, authentic things whose value was purely personal. Through close reading of the works of Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and others, this study illuminates the treasuring of objects that had belonged to or touched the dead.

Contents:

Introduction: lyrical matter

Infinite materiality: Keats, D.G. Rossetti and the Romantics

The miracle of ordinary things: Brontë and Wuthering Heights

The many faces of death masks: Dickens and Great Expectations

The elegy as shrine: Tennyson and 'In Memoriam'

Hair jewelry as congealed time: Hardy and Far from the Madding Crowd

Afterword: death as death.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781316255858

1316255859

9781316235041

1316235041

9781316236932

1316236935

9781316253953

1316253953

9781316250174

1316250172

9781107434394

1107434394

9781139924887

1139924885

9781316252062

131625206X

9781316248287

1316248283

9781316246382

1316246388

Publisher Number:

2027/heb34014 hdl