Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature: Literary Content as Artistic Experience

ISBN-13: 9781474460613 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 256 str.

Patrick Fessenbecker

Opis

Argues against the repeated emphasis on literary form and for the artistic importance of literary contentIt is natural to assume that if works of literature are artistically valuable, it's not because of anything they say but because of what they are: beautiful. Works of art try to say nothing, to use their content only as matter for realizing the beauty of complex form. But what if appreciating the things a work of literature has to say is a way of appreciating it as a work of art? Often dismissed as too lengthy, messy, and preachy to qualify as genuine art, in fact Victorian narrative challenges our conceptions about what makes art worth engaging.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: In Defence of Paraphrase; 1. Content and Form; 2. Anthony Trollope on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Ethical Confusion; 3. Justifying Anachronism; 4. The Scourge of the Unwilling: George Eliot on the Sources of Normativity; 5. Everyday Aesthetics and the Experience of the Profound; 6. Robert Browning, Augusta Webster, and the Role of Morality; Epilogue: Between Immersion and Critique: Thoughtful Reading; Index.