Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle

Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle
Author: Jane Ford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317576586

This volume marks the first sustained study to interrogate how and why issues of sexuality, desire, and economic processes intersect in the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle. At the end of the nineteenth-century, the move towards new models of economic thought marked the transition from a marketplace centred around the fulfilment of ‘needs’ to one ministering to anything that might, potentially, be desired. This collection considers how the literature of the period meditates on the interaction between economy and desire, doing so with particular reference to the themes of fetishism, homoeroticism, the literary marketplace, social hierarchy, and consumer culture. Drawing on theoretical and conceptual approaches including queer theory, feminist theory, and gift theory, contributors offer original analyses of work by canonical and lesser-known writers, including Oscar Wilde, A.E. Housman, Baron Corvo, Vernon Lee, Michael Field, and Lucas Malet. The collection builds on recent critical developments in fin-de-siècle literature (including major interventions in the areas of Decadence, sexuality, and gender studies) and asks, for instance, how did late nineteenth-century writing schematise the libidinal and somatic dimensions of economic exchange? How might we define the relationship between eroticism and the formal economies of literary production/performance? And what relation exists between advertising/consumer culture and (dissident) sexuality in fin-de-siecle literary discourses? This book marks an important contribution to 19th-Century and Victorian literary studies, and enhances the field of fin-de-siècle studies more generally.

The Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe

The Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe
Author: Michael Hollington
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 748
Release: 2013-08-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1623560764

The Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe offers a full historical survey of Dickens's reception in all the major European countries and many of the smaller ones, filling a major gap in Dickens scholarship, which has by and large neglected Dickens's fortunes in Europe, and his impact on major European authors and movements. Essays by leading international critics and translators give full attention to cultural changes and fashions, such as the decline of Dickens's fortunes at the end of the nineteenth century in the period of Naturalism and Aestheticism, and the subsequent upswing in the period of Modernism, in part as a consequence of the rise of film in the era of Chaplin and Eisenstein. It will also offer accounts of Dickens's reception in periods of political upheaval and revolution such as during the communist era in Eastern Europe or under fascism in Germany and Italy in particular.

Global Dickens

Global Dickens
Author: Nirshan Perera
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351933523

This volume of essays provides a selection of leading contemporary scholarship which situates Dickens in a global perspective. The articles address four main areas: Dickens's reception outside Britain and North America; his intertextual relations with and influence upon writers from different parts of the world; Dickens as traveller; and the presence throughout his fiction and journalism of subjects, such as race and empire, that extend beyond the national contexts in which his work is usually considered. Written by leading researchers from diverse countries and cultures, this is an indispensable reference work in the field of Dickens studies.

D H Lawrence: Poet

D H Lawrence: Poet
Author: Keith M. Sagar
Publisher: Humanities-Ebooks
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847603122

Though much has been written about Lawrence's poetry (as revealed by the several hundred entries in the book's checklist of criticism), there have been relatively few full length studies. This book deals with the whole range of his poetry from his earliest poems, such as 'To Campions' and 'To Guelder Roses', through the poems inspired by his elopement with and subsequent marriage to Frieda Weekley (Look! We Have Come Through!), to the mature achievement, in free verse forms inspired by Walt Whitman, of Birds, Beasts and Flowers, Pansies and Last Poems. The genesis of the poems in Lawrence's life is explored; and there are new interpretations of his most memorable poems, such as 'The Wild Common', 'Piano', 'Song of a Man Who Has Come Through', Tortoises, 'Peach', 'Pomegranate', 'Snake', 'Bavarian Gentians' and 'The Ship of Death'.

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad
Author: Robert D. Hamner
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780894102172

Issues of racial discrimination, imperialist exploitation, and accuracy of observation have long interested Conrad's critics. As a European writing about imperialism in exotic lands, Conrad offered a vivid, but subjective account of the confrontations between the cultures and peoples of East and West. Though some in Africa have condemned his novels as racist, the books have been used as models for the work of recent generations of native writers. This collection of essays places Conrad's work under the scrutiny of an international array of scholars, who explore the response to Conrad in contemporary times, as well as during his own era.

Virginia Woolf's Essayism

Virginia Woolf's Essayism
Author: Randi Saloman
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2012-05-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0748646493

Explores the way Woolf used essay-writing techniques to develop her conception of the modern novel.The focus of this study is on Virginia Woolf's vast output of essays and their relation to her fiction. Randi Saloman shows that it was by employing tools and methods drawn from the essay genre - such as fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness and dialogic engagement with the reader - that Woolf managed to leave behind the realism of the 19th-century novel. Saloman draws on key theorists of the essay such as T. W. Adorno and Georg Lukacs, as well as on more recent scholars of 'essayism' (a term devised by Robert Musil to describe the hypothetical quality of the essay mode). She shows that the essay, as genre and mode, shaped Woolf's writing, and modern fiction more generally, in ways that have not yet been articulated. Key Features:* In-depth consideration of Virginia Woolf's shorter essays* Revisionary accounts of /A Room of One's Own/ (1929) and /Three Guineas/ (1938)* New readings of Woolf's major and less well-known novels, including /The Pargiters/, her failed 'essay-novel'* Repositions the essay as a major modernist genre, responsible in large part for the creation of the modern (and especially the 'modernist') novelKeywords: Virginia Woolf, Modernism, The Essay, Fiction, Essayism, The Novel, Genre