Victorian Literature by Behlman, Lee; Longmuir, Anne;

Short description:

Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates offers a comprehensive introduction to the critical debates about Victorian Literature, addressing the most popular and engaging topics in the field today.

Long description:

Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates offers a comprehensive and critically engaging introduction to the study of Victorian literature and addresses the most popular and vibrant topics in the field today.

Separated into twelve sections, this anthology investigates issues as diverse as neo-formalism, sensationalism, religion, evolution, psychology, gender and sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, and economics. Each section contains at least three classic essays from leading scholars which offer a variety of approaches and theories from the liveliest areas of current criticism and debate in the field. Each section concludes with a newly written essay from a subject expert that reflects on this work and looks forward to new directions. A sign-posted introduction to the key critical contributions in Victorian studies from the past twenty-five years sets the reader on their path.

Providing both the essential criticism along with clear introductions and analysis, this book is the perfect guide for students and scholars of Victorian literature.

Table of Contents:

General Introduction, Anne Longmuir and Lee Behlman

Introduction

1. Rereading Victorian Poetry, Isobel Armstrong

2. The Fix of Form: an Open Letter, Herbert F. Tucker

3. Physiological Poetics; Patmore, Hopkins and the Uncertain Body of Victorian Poetry, Jason R. Rudy

4. Victorian Poetry and Form, Charles LaPorte

Introduction

5. Canonization through Dispossession: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the "Pythian Shriek," Tricia Lootens

6. Rewriting a History of the Lyre: Letitia Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the (Re)construction of the Nineteenth-Century Woman Poet, Linda H. Peterson

7. Atheist Prophecy: Mathilde Blinde, Constance Naden, and the Victorian Poetess, Charles LaPorte

8. Women Poets and the Poetess Tradition, Linda K. Hughes

Introduction

9. What is Real in Realism?, Nancy Armstrong

10. Information Unveiled, Richard Menke

11. Composing the Novel Body: Re-Membering the Body and the Text in Little Dorrit, Daniel Novak

12. Realism and Photography, Jennifer Green-Lewis

Introduction

13. Marketing Affect: The Nineteenth-Century Sensation Novel, Ann Cvetkovich

14. The Abhuman; Chaotic Bodies, Kelly Hurley

15. Toward a Sensational Theory of Criticism; Sensation fiction Theorizes Masochism, Anna Maria Jones

16. Genre fiction and the Sensational, Pamela K. Gilbert

Introduction

17. Christina Rossetti and the Doctrine of Reserve, Emma Mason

18. Orthodox Narratives of Literary Sacralization, William R. McKelvy

19. Sacrifice and the Sufferings of the Substitute: Dickens and the Atonement Controversy of the 1850s, Jan-Melissa Schramm

20. Religion and Literature, Mark Knight

Introduction

21. The Remnant of the Mythical; Fit and Misfitting: Anthropomorphism and the Natural Order, Gillian Beer

22. Dickens and Darwin, George Levine

23. Conversation on Creation, James Secord

24. Darwinian Science and Victorian Respectability, Gowan Dawson

25. Darwin and Victorian Culture, Jonathan Smith

Introduction

26. Villette: "the Surveillance of a Sleepless Eye," Sally Shuttleworth

27. The Discourse of Physiology in General Biology, Rick Rylance

28. The Psyche in Pain; Dream and trance: Gaskell’s North and South as a "Condition of Consciousness" Novel, Jill Matus

29. Psychology and Literature, Michael Davis

Introduction

30. The Female Relations of Victorian England, Sharon Marcus

31. The Curious Princess, the Novel, and the Law, Hilary M. Schor

32. Revelation in the Divorce Court, Deborah Cohen

33. Gender, Sexuality, Domesticity, Melissa Valiska Gregory

Introduction

34. Forms of Detachment, Amanda Anderson

35. Is there a Pastor in the House? Sanitary Reform and Governing Agency in Dickens’s Midcentury Fiction, Lauren M. E. Goodlad

36. A Frame of Mind: Signature Liberalism at the Fortnightly Review, Elaine Hadley

37. Disinterestedness and Liberalism, Daniel S. Malachuk

Introduction

38. Introduction to Kim, Edward Said

39. Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880-1914, Patrick Brantlinger

40. Missionary men and Morant Bay 1859-1866, Catherine Hall

41. Fantasy and Ideology, John Kucich

42. Imperialism and Literature in the Age of Colonialism, Muireann O'Cinneide

Introduction

43. Daniel Deronda and the Afterlife of Ownership, Jeff Nunokawa

44. The Bioeconomics of Our Mutual Friend, Catherine Gallagher

45. Literary Appropriations, Mary Poovey

46. Economics, the Market, and Victorian Culture, Jill Rappoport

Introduction

47. The Advantage of Fiction: the Novel and the "Success" of the Victorian Periodical, Laurel Brake

48. The Age of Newspapers, Matthew Rubery

49. The Book as Go-Between: Domestic Service and Forced Reading, Leah Price

50. Print Culture, Jennifer Phegley