The Commodification of Identity in Victorian Narrative: Autobiography, Sensation, and the Literary Marketplace

ISBN-13: 9781108484459 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 296 str.

Sean Grass

Opis

An exploration of the commodification of autobiography 1820–1860 in relation to shifting fictional representations of identity.

Recenzje

'The Commodification of Identity in Victorian Narrative is a bravura performance, resting on extensive bibliographical research and a conceptually rigorous reading of a group of 3476 novels which Grass claims constitute a turning point in the modern representation of personal development over time. In every sense it is immersed in texts, both as constituents of a critical phase of book history, and as the means by which identity was structured and understood in mid-Victorian England.' David Vincent, Victorian Studies

Spis treści

Introduction: life upon the exchange: commodifying the Victorian subject; 1. 'A vile symptom': autobiography and the commodification of identity; 2. 'Portable property': commodity and identity in Great Expectations; 3. Lady Audley's portrait: textuality, gender, and power; 4. Amnesia, madness, and financial fraud: ontologies of loss in Silas Marner and Hard Cash; 5. 'What money can make of life': willing subjects and commodity culture in Our Mutual Friend; 6. The Moonstone, sacred identity, and the material self; Conclusion: money made of life: the Tichborne claimant.