The Maternal Image of God in Victorian Literature

The Maternal Image of God in Victorian Literature
Author: Rebecca Styler
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2023-07-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000892999

This book is the study of a religious metaphor: the idea of God as a mother, in British and US literature 1850–1915. It uncovers a tradition of writers for whom divine motherhood embodied ideals felt to be missing from the orthodox masculine deity. Elizabeth Gaskell, Josephine Butler, George Macdonald, Frances Hodgson Burnett and Charlotte Perkins Gilman independently reworked their inherited faith to create a new symbol that better met their religious needs, based on ideal Victorian notions of motherhood and ‘Mother Nature’. Divine motherhood signified compassion, universal salvation and a realised gospel of social reform led primarily by women to establish sympathetic community. Connected to Victorian feminism, it gave authority to women’s voices and to ‘feminine’ cultural values in the public sphere. It represented divine immanence within the world, often providing the grounds for an ecological ethic, including human–animal fellowship. With reference also to writers including Charlotte Brontë, Anna Jameson, Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Charles, Theodore Parker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Baker Eddy and authors of literary utopias, this book shows the extent of maternal theology in Victorian thought and explores its cultural roots. The book reveals a new way in which Victorian writers creatively negotiated between religious tradition and modernity.

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England
Author: Anna Kay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2023-09-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000933075

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England seeks to provide a comprehensive examination of the notorious Mannings' ‘Bermondsey murder’, and its wider implications in Victorian criminal narrative and popular culture. Exploring the ongoing textual afterlife of Maria Manning, including significant literary contributions by Charles Dickens through his characters Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Defarge, this volume illuminates representations both echoed and challenged in mid-nineteenth-century conceptions of gender, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, and criminality. This volume also examines the five largely forgotten cases of female homicide from the same year and the imagined discourse perpetuated in fictional personifications. Utilising a wide breadth of literary and historical research, this volume provides readers with a thorough understanding of the various cultural implications of crime and gender in the Victorian period to be read, remembered, and reinterpreted today. Located simultaneously in the fields of feminist, historical, and literary criticism, this volume is invaluable to students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and researchers with an interest in criminology and media culture.

The Wizard of Oz as American Myth

The Wizard of Oz as American Myth
Author: Alissa Burger
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-03-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 078646643X

Since the publication of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, authors, filmmakers, and theatrical producers have been retelling and reinventing this uniquely American fairy tale. This volume examines six especially significant incarnations of the story: Baum's original novel, the MGM classic The Wizard of Oz (1939), Sidney Lumet's African American film musical The Wiz (1978), Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's Broadway hit Wicked: A New Musical (2003), and the SyFy Channel miniseries Tin Man (2007). A close consideration of these works demonstrates how versions of Baum's tale are influenced by and help shape notions of American myth, including issues of gender, race, home, and magic, and makes clear that the Wizard of Oz narrative remains compelling and relevant today.

Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Routledge Revivals)

Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Routledge Revivals)
Author: George P. Landow
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2014-07-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317634969

The importance of typology in the study of early modern literature has long been accepted, yet students of Victorian culture have paid little attention to it. First published in 1980, this study demonstrates how biblical typology, an apparently arcane interpretative mode, had profound effects on the secular culture of the Victorian age: its art, literature and thought. George Landow considers the way in which the average English believer learned to read their Bible in terms of the types and shadows of Christ, the various ways in which Victorian poetry and hymns employed certain imagery, and the use of typological symbolism in narrative poetry, prose fiction, dramatic monologue and non-fiction. In a concluding chapter, he investigates the particularly complex, and often ironic, combinations of typological image and typological structure.

The Bridge of History Over the Gulf of Time

The Bridge of History Over the Gulf of Time
Author: Thomas Cooper
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2023-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3382108445

Reprint of the original. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

The Maiden, Mother, Matriarch

The Maiden, Mother, Matriarch
Author: Conrad Riker
Publisher: Conrad Riker
Total Pages: 248
Release: 101-01-01
Genre: Humor
ISBN:

Are you feeling lost in a world that tells you to forget your maternal instincts and embrace the "strong independent woman" narrative? Are you tired of feeling like you have to choose between your career and your family? Are you wondering how to instill traditional values in your children while still adapting to modern society? "The Maiden, Mother, Matriarch" is the ultimate guide for rediscovering the archetype of the good mother and embracing your natural instincts as a woman. In this book, author Conrad Riker explores: - The importance of traditional roles within the family structure and the consequences of abandoning them. - How to preserve and pass on cultural customs, especially those related to child-rearing and household management. - The relationship between the mother archetype and religious beliefs, specifically Christianity and its figure of Mary as the virgin mother. - The psychological and emotional consequences of abandoning traditional roles and adopting more masculine or androgynous identities. - The experiences and perspectives of women who have chosen to embrace traditional roles within their personal lives and relationships. Don't let the world force you into becoming something you're not. Embrace your maternal instincts and learn how to balance career, family, and tradition. If you want to rediscover the lost art of being a good mother, buy "The Maiden, Mother, Matriarch" today!

Knowing the Past

Knowing the Past
Author: Suzy Anger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801487651

Text vs. hypertext: seeing the Victorian object as in itself it really is / Gerhard Joseph -- The golden bough and the unknowable / Christopher Herbert -- Daniel Deronda: a new epistemology / George Levine -- Walter Pater's impressionism and the form of historical revival Carolyn Williams -- Arnold and the authorization of criticism / Herbert F. Tucker -- Aesthetics, ethics, and unreadable acts in George Eliot / Jonathan Loesberg -- The structure of anxiety in political economy and Hard times / Mary Poovey -- How to be a benefactor without any money: the chill of welfare in Great expectations / Bruce Robbins -- Tracking the sentimental eye / Judith Stoddart -- Knowing and telling in Dickens's retrospects / Rosemarie Bodenheimer -- Inside the shark's mouth: William Lovett's struggle for political language / Margery Sabin -- Knowing a life: Edith Simcox, Sat est vixisse? / Gillian Beer.