The Victorian Novel

This guide steers students through significant critical responses to the Victorian novel from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day.

Das E-Book The Victorian Novel wird angeboten von John Wiley & Sons und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

19th Century English Literature, Englische Literatur / 19. Jhd., Literary Criticism & History, Literature, Literaturkritik u. -geschichte, Literaturwissenschaft

Auteur
Francis O'Gorman is Lecturer in Victorian Literature in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He has written widely on the Victorian period, including the books John Ruskin (1999) and Late Ruskin: New Contexts (2001), and co-edited collections on Margaret Oliphant (1999), Ruskin and Gender (2002), and The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century: Reassessing the Tradition (2003). He has also written articles and book chapters on Ruskin, Tyndall, Robert Browning, Tennyson, Michael Field, and Victorian masculinities. He is currently working on an annotated anthology of Victorian poetry (Blackwell, forthcoming), and writing more on Ruskin.

Contenu
Acknowledgements xv Textual Note xix

Introduction 1

1. Early Criticism of the Victorian Novel from James Oliphant to David Cecil 17

The State of the Novel in 1900.

University Study of Victorian Literature.

Principles of Literary History.

The Approach of George Saintsbury.

Extract from Saintsbury's The English Novel (1913).

E.M. Forster and Critiquing Literary History.

The Modernist Construction of Victorian Fiction.

David Cecil's View of Victorian Novels and Culture.

Extract from Cecil's Early Victorian Novelists (1934).

Further Reading.

2. F.R. Leavis and The Great Tradition 46

Outline of the Chapter.

Leavis's Influence.

The Principles of Leavis' Criticism.

The Idea of Tradition.

1980s' Reactions to the Politics of Leavis' Criticism.

The Principles of Leavis' The Great Tradition (1948).

Its Treatment of Dickens and Leavis' Later Views on Him.

Extract from The Great Tradition.

Further Reading.

3. Feminism and the Victorian Novel in the 1970s 66

The Influence of 1970s' Feminism.

Outline of the Chapter.

Ellen Moers' Literary Women (1976).

Elaine Showalter and the Female Tradition.

Discussion of Showalter's A Literature of Their Own (1977).

1980s' Response to Showalter.

Extract from A Literature of Their Own.

Significance of Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979).

The Madwoman

Discussed.

Gilbertand Gubar's Appraisal of The Madwoman.

Extract from The Madwoman.

Further Reading.

4. Realism 94

Preliminary Questions.

Outline of the Chapter.

Histories of Realism.

Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) Discussed.

The Cartesian Certainties of Realism.

Watt Critiqued.

Alternative Histories of Realism.

Epistemology of Realism.

Ioan Williams and Realism's Certainties.

George Levine's View of Realism and Self-Consciousness.

Extract from Levine's The Realist Imagination (1981).

Psychological Coherence in Realism: Bersani's A Future for Astyanax (1976).

Politics of Classic Realism and Coherence Criticized in 1980s.

Extract from Belsey's Critical Practice (1980).

Belsey Critiqued.

D.A. Miller's The Novel and the Police (1988) Discussed.

The Turn Against Realism in the 1980s.

Interest in Gothic.

Interest in the not-Said of Realism.

The Feminist Recuperation of Realism in 1980s.

Extract from Boumehla's 'Realism and the Ends of Feminism' (1988).

New Historicism and Historicizing the Real.

Rothfield's Vital Signs (1992).

Nancy Armstrong and Kate Flint.

Conclusion.

Further Reading.

5. Social-Problem Fiction: Historicism and Feminism 149

What is Social-Problem Fiction?

Outline of the First Part of Chapter.

Cazamian's Reading in 1903.

The Significance of Raymond Williams.

Williams's 'Structures of Feeling'.

Williams's Criticisms of Social-Problem Fiction.

The Knowable Community in Williams's The English Novel (1970).

Extract from The English Novel.

Williams's Generalizations.

Sheila Smith's Particularization of Williams.

More Problems Found in Social-Problem Fiction.

Brantlinger's Historicization: a Context for Social-Problem Fiction.

New Historicism: Further Contexts. <p&...