A Companion to the Victorian Novel

ISBN-13: 9781405132916 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 528 str.

Patrick Brantlinger; William B. Thesing

Opis

The Companion to the Victorian Novel provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published between 1837 and 1901.

• Provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published during the Victorian period.


• Explains issues such as Victorian religions, class structure, and Darwinism to those who are unfamiliar with them.


• Comprises original, accessible chapters written by renowned and emerging scholars in the field of Victorian studies.


• Ideal for students and researchers seeking up-to-the-minute coverage of contexts and trends, or as a starting point for a survey course.

Recenzje

"These are wonderful essays [...] written by important scholars in the field. [...]Highly recommended." Choice

"another Blackwell reference work of prodigious proportions [...] by a galaxy of distinguished scholars [...] indispensable for any comprehensive reference library, destined indeed to be of permanent value and importance for many years to come." Reference Reviews

Spis treści

Acknowledgments viii

The Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing

PART I Historical Contexts and Cultural Issues 9

1 The Publishing World 11
Kelly J. Mays

2 Education, Literacy, and the Victorian Reader 31
Jonathan Rose

3 Money, the Economy, and Social Class 48
Regenia Gagnier

4 Victorian Psychology 67
Athena Vrettos

5 Empire, Race, and the Victorian Novel 84
Deirdre David

6 The Victorian Novel and Religion 101
Hilary Fraser

7 Scientific Ascendancy 119
John Kucich

8 Technology and Information: Accelerating Developments 137
Christopher Keep

9 Laws, the Legal World, and Politics 155
John R. Reed

10 Gender Politics and Women s Rights 172
Hilary M. Schor

11 The Other Arts: Victorian Visual Culture 189
Jeffrey Spear

12 Imagined Audiences: The Novelist and the Stage 207
Renata Kobetts Miller

PART II Forms of the Victorian Novel 225

13 Newgate Novel to Detective Fiction 227
F. S. Schwarzbach

14 The Historical Novel 244
John Bowen

15 The Sensation Novel 260
Winifred Hughes

16 The Bildungsroman 279
John R. Maynard

17 The Gothic Romance in the Victorian Period 302
Cannon Schmitt

18 The Provincial or Regional Novel 318
Ian Duncan

19 Industrial and Condition of England Novels 336
James Richard Simmons, Jr.

20 Children s Fiction 353
Lewis C. Roberts

21 Victorian Science Fiction 370
Patrick Brantlinger

PART III Victorian and Modern Theories of the Novel and the Reception of Novels and Novelists Then and Now 385

22 The Receptions of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy 387
Elizabeth Langland

23 Victorian Theories of the Novel 406
Joseph W. Childers

24 Modern and Postmodern Theories of Prose Fiction 424
Audrey Jaffe

25 The Afterlife of the Victorian Novel: Novels about Novels 442
Anne Humpherys

26 The Victorian Novel in Film and on Television 458
Joss Marsh and Kamilla Elliott

Index 478

O autorze

Patrick Brantlinger is Rudy Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth–Century British Fiction (1998), Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain 1694 1994 (1996), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism 1830 1914 (1990), and Crusoe s Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America (1990).

William B. Thesing is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He is the author of The London Muse: Victorian Poetic Responses to the City (1982) and the editor of five volumes in Gale s Dictionary of Literary Biography: Victorian Prose Writers before 1867 (1986), Victorian Prose Writers after 1867 (1987), Victorian Women Poets (1998), British Short–Fiction Writers, 1880 1914: The Realist Tradition (1994), and Late Nineteenth– and Early Twentieth–Century British Women Poets (2001). He recently edited Caverns of Night: Coal Mines in Art, Literature, and Film (2000).

Blurb

It is estimated that between 1837 and 1901 some 60,000 novels were published in Britain. This Companion introduces readers to the historical contexts in which this vast range of fiction was produced and to the critical debates that have raged about it ever since.

The Companion comprises twenty–six original, accessible chapters, written by renowned and emerging scholars in the field of Victorian studies. The first section provides overviews of key historical contexts, such as religion, class, gender, and the publishing world. The second part surveys the various genres and subgenres of the Victorian novel. The third deals with Victorian, modern, and postmodern theories of the novel and looks at how Victorian novels and novelists were received, both now and then.

A detailed and convenient index enables cross–referencing and study of a broad spectrum of authors, novels, themes, and controversies, while informed bibliographies following each chapter contain many helpful recommendations for further reading.