Idol of Suburbia

Idol of Suburbia PDF Author: Annette Federico
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Despite the ridicule of reviewers, Marie Corelli (1855-1924) was the most popular novelist of her time. Federico (English, James Madison University) points out the creative, combative and contradictory nature of Corelli's participation in the culture, and argues that her attempts to create her own image illuminate continuing debates about literary value, class hegemony, and gender politics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Idol of Suburbia

Idol of Suburbia PDF Author: Annette Federico
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Despite the ridicule of reviewers, Marie Corelli (1855-1924) was the most popular novelist of her time. Federico (English, James Madison University) points out the creative, combative and contradictory nature of Corelli's participation in the culture, and argues that her attempts to create her own image illuminate continuing debates about literary value, class hegemony, and gender politics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Margins of Desire

Margins of Desire PDF Author: Lynne Hapgood
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719059704
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Who said that the suburbs are boring? The suburban trick is to look ordinary and be extraordinary, as Lynne Hapgood's absorbing discussion of the suburbs in fiction from 1880-1925 reveals.

Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle

Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle PDF Author: S. Karschay
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137450339
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This exciting new study looks at degeneration and deviance in nineteenth-century science and late-Victorian Gothic fiction. The questions it raises are as relevant today as they were at the nineteenth century's fin de siecle: What constitutes the norm from which a deviation has occurred? What exactly does it mean to be 'normal' or 'abnormal'?

A Queer Chivalry

A Queer Chivalry PDF Author: Julia F. Saville
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Others decry his monasticism as the regrettably oppressive regimen from which he was able to escape only occasionally through his sensuous, sometimes overtly homoerotic verse." "Julia F. Saville uses Lacanian theories of sublimation and courtly love to reconfigure this long-standing rift in the field of Hopkins criticism."--BOOK JACKET.

The Sympathetic Medium

The Sympathetic Medium PDF Author: Jill Galvan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457386
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The nineteenth century saw not only the emergence of the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter but also a fascination with séances and occult practices like automatic writing as a means for contacting the dead. Like the new technologies, modern spiritualism promised to link people separated by space or circumstance; and like them as well, it depended on the presence of a human medium to convey these conversations. Whether electrical or otherworldly, these communications were remarkably often conducted—in offices, at telegraph stations and telephone switchboards, and in séance parlors—by women. In The Sympathetic Medium, Jill Galvan offers a richly nuanced and culturally grounded analysis of the rise of the female medium in Great Britain and the United States during the Victorian era and through the turn of the century. Examining a wide variety of fictional explorations of feminine channeling (in both the technological and supernatural realms) by such authors as Henry James, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Marie Corelli, and George Du Maurier, Galvan argues that women were often chosen for that role, or assumed it themselves, because they made at-a-distance dialogues seem more intimate, less mediated. Two allegedly feminine traits, sympathy and a susceptibility to automatism, enabled women to disappear into their roles as message-carriers.Anchoring her literary analysis in discussions of social, economic, and scientific culture, Galvan finds that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminization of mediated communication reveals the challenges that the new networked culture presented to prevailing ideas of gender, dialogue, privacy, and the relationship between body and self.

Hype

Hype PDF Author: Jon Helgason
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
ISBN: 9187675323
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In the world of books and literature, “hype” is associated with bestsellerism - the books that sell the most, are read by vast numbers, and constantly talked about in media and staff rooms. Often, it is the success in itself that generates an interest because popularity begets popularity. Quite often though, a hyped bestseller is met with a skeptic criticism of poor language, a badly constructed plot, a predictable story line, or all three. The bestseller phenomenon is sometimes conceived as a threat against “real” literature. Research into the creation, reception, and meaning of bestsellers is utterly scarce and Hype: Bestsellers and Literary Culture is an important contribution to the understanding of the literature read by the masses. Popular literature plays an important role in the lives of millions of readers, offering entertainment, social commentary, and alternate perspectives on everyday life. This volume brings together such diverse issues as the creation of hype, the role and the meaning of the author in the present-day media landscape, changes in the book trade, and the relationship between bestsellers and research into them. Further articles give an historical overview on postapocalyptic stories, desert romances and the role of the authors. This book offers new knowledge on a subject that is increasingly popular within university curricula. Although the anthology is a work of academic research the texts are of equal interest to general readers.

Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s

Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s PDF Author: Dustin Friedman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009081632
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
The 1890s were once seen as marginal within the larger field of Victorian studies, which tended to privilege the realist novel and the authors of the mid-century. In recent decades, the fin de siècle has come to be viewed as one of the most dynamic decades of the Victorian era. Viewed by writers and artists of the period as a moment of opportunity, transition, and urgency, the 1890s are pivotal for understanding the parameters of the field of Victorian studies itself. This volume makes a case for why the decade continues to be an area of perennial fascination, focusing on transnational connections, gender and sexuality, ecological concerns, technological innovations, and other current critical trends. This collection both calls attention to the diverse range of literature and art being produced during this period and foregrounds the relevance of the Victorian era's final years to issues and crises that face us today.

Heartthrobs

Heartthrobs PDF Author: Carol Dyhouse
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198765835
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
What can a cultural history of the heartthrob teach us about women, desire, and social change? From dreams of Prince Charming or dashing military heroes, to the lure of dark strangers and vampire lovers; from rock stars and rebels to soulmates, dependable family types or simply good companions, female fantasies about men tell us as much about the history of women as about masculine icons. When girls were supposed to be shrinking violets, passionate females risked being seen as "unbridled," or dangerously out of control. Change came slowly, and young women remained trapped in double-binds. You may have needed a husband in order to survive, but you had to avoid looking like a gold-digger. Sexual desire could be dangerous: a rash guide to making choices. Show attraction too openly and you might be judged "fast" and undesirable. Education and wage-earning brought independence and a widening of cultural horizons. Young women in the early twentieth century showed a sustained appetite for novel-reading, cinema-going, and the dancehall. They sighed over Rudolph Valentino's screen performances, as tango-dancer, Arab tribesman, or desert lover. Contemporary critics were sniffy about "shop-girl" taste in literature and in men, but as consumers, girls had new clout. In Heartthrobs, social and cultural historian Carole Dyhouse draws upon literature, cinema, and popular romance to show how the changing position of women has shaped their dreams about men, from Lord Byron in the early nineteenth century to boy-bands in the early twenty-first. Reflecting on the history of women as consumers and on the nature of fantasy, escapism, and "fandom," she takes us deep into the world of gender and the imagination. A great deal of feminist literature has shown women as objects of the "male gaze": this book looks at men through the eyes of women.

The Promise of the Suburbs

The Promise of the Suburbs PDF Author: Sarah Bilston
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300186363
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
A study of the fast-growing Victorian suburbs as places of connection, creativity, and professional advance, especially for women From the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, the suburbs were maligned by the aristocratic elite as dull zones of low cultural ambition and vulgarity, as well as generally female spaces isolated from the consequential male world of commerce. Sarah Bilston argues that these attitudes were forged to undermine the cultural authority of the emerging middle class and to reinforce patriarchy by trivializing women’s work. Resisting these stereotypes, Bilston reveals how suburban life offered ambitious women, especially women writers, access to supportive communities and opportunities for literary and artistic experimentation as well as professional advancement. From more familiar figures such as the sensation author Mary Elizabeth Braddon to interior design journalist Jane Ellen Panton and garden writer Jane Loudon, this work presents a more complicated portrait of how women and English society at large navigated a fast-growing, rapidly changing landscape.

Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914

Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914 PDF Author: Alexis Easley
Publisher: University of Delaware
ISBN: 1611490170
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This study examines literary celebrity in Britain from 1850 to 1914 with chapters focused on a variety of Victorian authors, including Charles Dickens, Harriet Martineau, and Octavia Hill. Through lively analysis of rare cultural materials, Easley demonstrates the crucial role of the celebrity author in the formation of British national identity. As Victorians toured the homes and haunts of famous writers, they developed a sense of shared national heritage. At the same time, by reading sensational accounts of writers' lives, they were able to reconsider conventional gender roles and domestic arrangements. Women writers capitalized on celebrity media as a way of furthering their own careers and retelling British history on their own terms. Easley demonstrates how the trope of the literary celebrity was utilized for other purposes as well, including the professionalization of medicine, the development of the open space movement, and the formation of the literary canon.