The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction

The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction PDF Author: Rosemarie Bodenheimer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501733443
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The most telling expression of the politics of a novel, Rosemarie Bodenheimer asserts, lies not in its proclaimed social intent, its continuity with nonfictional discourse, or its truth to class experience, but in the models of social movement and transformation traced out in the thread of its narrative. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction explores the story patterns and other narrative conventions through which the industrial or social-problem novel gives fictional shape to questions that were experienced as new, unpredictable, and troubling in the Victorian age. Bodenheimer considers novels explicitly linked with the condition of England debates that preoccupied public-minded Victorians, narratives that confront such topics as the factory system, industrial and rural poverty, working-class politics, and the plight of women. Grouping well-known novels with less frequently read works according to shared narrative patterns, Bodenheimer delineates lines of influence, argument, and development within the subgenre of social fiction. Among the works she discusses are Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, two novels by Frances Trollope, Geraldine Jewsbury's Marian Withers, George Eliot's Felix Holt the Radical, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, and Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil.

The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction

The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction PDF Author: Rosemarie Bodenheimer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501733443
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The most telling expression of the politics of a novel, Rosemarie Bodenheimer asserts, lies not in its proclaimed social intent, its continuity with nonfictional discourse, or its truth to class experience, but in the models of social movement and transformation traced out in the thread of its narrative. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction explores the story patterns and other narrative conventions through which the industrial or social-problem novel gives fictional shape to questions that were experienced as new, unpredictable, and troubling in the Victorian age. Bodenheimer considers novels explicitly linked with the condition of England debates that preoccupied public-minded Victorians, narratives that confront such topics as the factory system, industrial and rural poverty, working-class politics, and the plight of women. Grouping well-known novels with less frequently read works according to shared narrative patterns, Bodenheimer delineates lines of influence, argument, and development within the subgenre of social fiction. Among the works she discusses are Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, two novels by Frances Trollope, Geraldine Jewsbury's Marian Withers, George Eliot's Felix Holt the Radical, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, and Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil.

The Victorian Social-Problem Novel

The Victorian Social-Problem Novel PDF Author: Josephine M. Guy
Publisher: Red Globe Press
ISBN: 0333628446
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book describes various accounts of the Victorian social-problem novel, examining their strengths and limitations in the light of the historiographical assumptions which underlie them. An alternative historical account is offered, which focuses on the novels' intellectual milieu - specifically on mid-Victorian concepts of 'the social' and of what was understood by the term 'social problem'. In detailed readings of individual works, the book argues that an appreciation of these concepts permits new ways of understanding the contradictions identified in these works together with their apparently 'conservative' politics.

The penny politics of Victorian popular fiction

The penny politics of Victorian popular fiction PDF Author: Rob Breton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526156377
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Penny politics offers a new way to read early Victorian popular fiction such as Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London. It locates forms of radical discourse in the popular literature that emerged simultaneously with Brittan’s longest and most significant people’s movement. It listens for echoes of Chartist fiction in popular fiction. The book rethinks the relationship between the popular and political, understanding that radical politics had popular appeal and that the lines separating a genuine radicalism from commercial success are complicated and never absolute. With archival work into Newgate calendars and Chartist periodicals, as well as media history and culture, it brings together histories of the popular and political so as to rewrite the radical canon.

Satire in the Victorian novel

Satire in the Victorian novel PDF Author: Frances Theresa Russell
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
"Satire in the Victorian novel" by Frances Theresa Russell. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

The Victorian Novel

The Victorian Novel PDF Author: Francis O'Gorman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470779853
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This guide steers students through significant critical responses to the Victorian novel from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day.

The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature

The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature PDF Author: Dennis Denisoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429018177
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature offers 45 chapters by leading international scholars working with the most dynamic and influential political, cultural, and theoretical issues addressing Victorian literature today. Scholars and students will find this collection both useful and inspiring. Rigorously engaged with current scholarship that is both historically sensitive and theoretically informed, the Routledge Companion places the genres of the novel, poetry, and drama and issues of gender, social class, and race in conversation with subjects like ecology, colonialism, the Gothic, digital humanities, sexualities, disability, material culture, and animal studies. This guide is aimed at scholars who want to know the most significant critical approaches in Victorian studies, often written by the very scholars who helped found those fields. It addresses major theoretical movements such as narrative theory, formalism, historicism, and economic theory, as well as Victorian models of subjects such as anthropology, cognitive science, and religion. With its lists of key works, rich cross-referencing, extensive bibliographies, and explications of scholarly trajectories, the book is a crucial resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, while offering invaluable support to more seasoned scholars.

A Companion to the Victorian Novel

A Companion to the Victorian Novel PDF Author: William Baker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313011176
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Victorian novels remain enormously popular today: some continue to be made into films, while authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot are firmly established in the canon and taught at all levels. These works have also attracted a great deal of critical attention, with much current scholarship examining the novel in relation to its historical, political, and cultural contexts. This reference book is an introductory guide to the Victorian novel, its background, and its legacy. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and offers a fresh account of past, current, and new directions in scholarship. The volume is divided into several broad sections, with chapters in each section treating more specialized topics. The first section looks at the emergence of the Victorian novel and its literary precursors, with particular emphasis on the growth of serialization and the development of the novel of syndication. The second explores significant social and cultural facets of nineteenth-century British literature, while the third discusses the principal features of different genres, such as ghost stories, the Gothic, detective fiction, the social problem novel, and contemporary film adaptations. Individual authors are examined in the fourth section, while the fifth overviews various critical approaches and their application to nineteenth-century fiction.

The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England

The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England PDF Author: Barbara Leah Harman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813917726
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In this book, Barbara Leah Harman convincingly establishes a new category in Victorian fiction: the feminine political novel. By studying Victorian female protagonists who participate in the public universe conventionally occupied by men - the world of mills and city streets, of political activism and labor strikes, of public speaking and parliamentary debates - she is able to reassess the public realm as the site of noble and meaningful action for women in Victorian England. Harman examines at length Bronte's Shirley, Gaskell's North and South, Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, Gissing's In the Year of Jubilee, and Elizabeth Robins's The Convert, reading these novels in relation to each other and to developments in the emerging British women's movement. She argues that these texts constitute a countertradition in Victorian fiction: neither domestic fiction nor fiction about the public "fallen" woman, these novels reveal how nineteenth-century English writers began to think about female transgression into the political sphere and about the intriguing meanings of women's public appearances.

Encyclopedia of the Novel

Encyclopedia of the Novel PDF Author: Paul Schellinger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135918260
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 838

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Book Description
The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.

The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy

The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy PDF Author: Andrew Mangham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192590278
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy is a reassessment of the languages and methodologies used, throughout the nineteenth century, for discussing extreme hunger in Britain. Set against the providentialism of conservative political economy, this study uncovers an emerging, dynamic way of describing literal starvation in medicine and physiology. No longer seen as a divine punishment for individual failings, starvation became, in the human sciences, a pathology whose horrific symptoms registered failings of state and statute. Providing new and historically-rich readings of the works of Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens, this book suggests that the realism we have come to associate with Victorian social problem fiction learned a vast amount from the empirical, materialist objectives of the medical sciences and that, within the mechanics of these intersections, we find important re-examinations of how we might think about this ongoing humanitarian issue.