Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction PDF Author: Jason Marc Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317134648
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction PDF Author: Jason Marc Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317134648
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction PDF Author: Jason Marc Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317134656
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.

The Encyclopedia of the Gothic

The Encyclopedia of the Gothic PDF Author: William Hughes
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119210461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 887

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Book Description
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GOTHIC “Well written and interesting [it is] a testament to the breadth and depth of knowledge about its central subject among the more than 130 contributing writers, and also among the three editors, each of whom is a significant figure in the field of gothic studies ... A reference work that’s firmly rooted in and actively devoted to expressing the current state of academic scholarship about its area.” New York Journal of Books “A substantial achievement.” Reference Reviews Comprehensive and wide-ranging, The Encyclopedia of the Gothic brings together over 200 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars writing on all aspects of the Gothic as it is currently taught and researched, along with challenging insights into the development of the genre and its impact on contemporary culture. The A-Z entries provide comprehensive coverage of relevant authors, national traditions, critical developments, and notable texts that continue to define, shape, and inform the genre. The volume’s approach is truly interdisciplinary, with essays by specialist international contributors whose expertise extends beyond Gothic literature to film, music, drama, art, and architecture. From Angels and American Gothic to Wilde and Witchcraft, The Encyclopedia of the Gothic is the definitive reference guide to all aspects of this strange and wondrous genre. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature is a comprehensive, scholarly, authoritative, and critical overview of literature and theory comprising individual titles covering key literary genres, periods, and sub-disciplines. Available both in print and online, this groundbreaking resource provides students, teachers, and researchers with cutting-edge scholarship in literature and literary studies.

Marriage in James Hogg’s Work

Marriage in James Hogg’s Work PDF Author: Barbara Leonardi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004519998
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
A controversial self-taught shepherd who violated the rules of literary decorum to reveal the dark side of the Scottish margins. Through a strategic use of nineteenth-century stereotypes of femininity and masculinity he lays bare the intersection with class and ethnicity in Scotland.

Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712–1831

Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712–1831 PDF Author: Professor David Sandner
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409478998
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Challenging literary histories that locate the emergence of fantastic literature in the Romantic period, David Sandner shows that tales of wonder and imagination were extremely popular throughout the eighteenth century. Sandner engages contemporary critical definitions and defenses of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century fantastic literature, demonstrating that a century of debate and experimentation preceded the Romantic's interest in the creative imagination. In 'The Fairy Way of Writing,' Joseph Addison first defines the literary use of the supernatural in a 'modern' and 'rational' age. Other writers like Richard Hurd, James Beattie, Samuel Johnson, James Percy, and Walter Scott influence the shape of the fantastic by defining and describing the modern fantastic in relation to a fabulous and primitive past. As the genre of the 'purely imaginary,' Sandner argues, the fantastic functions as a discourse of the sublime imagination, albeit a contested discourse that threatens to disrupt any attempt to ground the sublime in the realistic or sympathetic imagination. His readings of works by authors such as Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford, Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Walter Scott, and James Hogg not only redefine the antecedents of the fantastic but also offer a convincing account of how and why the fantastic came to be marginalized in the wake of the Enlightenment.

The Female Fantastic

The Female Fantastic PDF Author: Lizzie McCormick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351107771
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
For women-identified writers of both eras, the fantastic offered double vision. Not only did the genre offer strategic cover for challenging the status quo, but also a heuristic mechanism for teasing out the gendered psyche’s links to creative, personal, and erotic agency. These dynamic presentations of female and gender-queer subjectivity, are linked in intriguing and complex matrices to key moments in gender(ed) history. This volume contains essays from international scholars covering a wide range of topics, including werewolves, mummies, fairies, demons, time travel, ghosts, haunted spaces and objects, race, gender, queerness, monstrosity, madness, incest, empire, medicine, and science. By interrogating two non-consecutive decades, we seek to uncover the inter-relationships among fantastic literature, feminism, and modern identity and culture. Indeed, while this book considers the relationship between the 1890s and 1920s, it is more an examination of women’s modernism in light of gendered literary production during the fin-de-siècle than the reverse.

The Fantastic of the Fin de Siècle

The Fantastic of the Fin de Siècle PDF Author: Zdeněk Beran
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443816469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This volume explores various facets of the relationship between the fantastic and the fin de siècle. The essays included here examine how the fin de siècle reflects the fantastic and its relation to the genesis of aesthetic ideas, to the concepts of terror and horror, the sublime, and evil, to Gothic and sensation fiction, to the Aesthetic Movement and Decadence. They also raise the question regarding the ways in which fantastic literature reflects the dynamic and all-too-often controversial development of the concept of the fantastic. At the same time, the majority of the contributions also investigate a broader context of specific social, political and economic conditions that frame the fantastic of the fin de siècle. They examine how fantastic genres use narrative manipulations, and how they incorporate various ideas of scientific development and progress by highlighting the role of religion, cultural anxiety and social crisis, as well as exploring the ways such genres use the fantastic for various purposes of cultural and social subversion. Fin de siècle fantastic literature is also investigated across a variety of cultures, as reflected in Scottish, Canadian, Australian, American and British writing, with particular emphasis on their predominant cultural or generic aspects, the genesis of the fin de siècle fantastic in some of these cultures and literatures, and their relations to a wider historical and cultural framework. The essays as a whole represent the work of scholars working in a diverse range of fields, and therefore adopt a wide range of approaches to the fantastic. As such, this volume provides a fresh and stimulating platform for further rethinking of the concept of the fantastic and its relation to fin de siècle literature, and its theoretical, philosophical, generic, and other implications within a broader literary, social and cultural context.

Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913

Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913 PDF Author: Joan Passey
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 178683992X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This book asks why so many authors drew on Cornwall for inspiration across the long nineteenth century, and considers the seismic cultural changes in Cornwall that spurred this interest – from the collapse of the mining industry to the developing national rail network; from the birth of tourism to the neomedieval rise in interest in King Arthur. Understanding frequently overlooked Cornwall in this period is vital to understanding Gothic literature, the Victorian imagination, intellectual and creative networks, and attitudes towards regionality. The first part of the book considers landscape and legend, defining a mining Gothic tradition, exposing the shipwreck as Gothic mastertrope, and demonstrating how antiquarians drew from Cornish legends and lore. The second part explores encounters with modernity, investigating the impact of railway expansion on access to Cornwall, the development of a Cornish King Arthur as a key figure of Victorian masculinity, and the specific features of the Cornish ghost story.

Why Fairy Tales Stick

Why Fairy Tales Stick PDF Author: Jack Zipes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135204349
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In his latest book, fairy tales expert Jack Zipes explores the question of why some fairy tales "work" and others don't, why the fairy tale is uniquely capable of getting under the skin of culture and staying there. Why, in other words, fairy tales "stick." Long an advocate of the fairy tale as a serious genre with wide social and cultural ramifications, Jack Zipes here makes his strongest case for the idea of the fairy tale not just as a collection of stories for children but a profoundly important genre. Why Fairy Tales Stick contains two chapters on the history and theory of the genre, followed by case studies of famous tales (including Cinderella, Snow White, and Bluebeard), followed by a summary chapter on the problematic nature of traditional storytelling in the twenty-first century.

A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English

A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English PDF Author: Sherri L. Brown
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442277483
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The Gothic began as a designation for barbarian tribes, was associated with the cathedrals of the High Middle Ages, was used to describe a marginalized literature in the late eighteenth century, and continues today in a variety of forms (literature, film, graphic novel, video games, and other narrative and artistic forms). Unlike other recent books in the field that focus on certain aspects of the Gothic, this work directs researchers to seminal and significant resources on all of its aspects. Annotations will help researchers determine what materials best suit their needs. A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English covers Gothic cultural artifacts such as literature, film, graphic novels, and videogames. This authoritative guide equips researchers with valuable recent information about noteworthy resources that they can use to study the Gothic effectively and thoroughly.