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Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature

Edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno

Victorian literature’s fascination with the past, its examination of social injustice, and its struggle to deal with the dichotomy between scientific discoveries and religious faith continue to fascinate scholars and contemporary readers. During the past hundred years, traditional formalist and humanist criticism has been augmented by new critical approaches, including feminism and gender studies, psychological criticism, cultural studies, and others.

In Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature, twelve scholars offer new assessments of Victorian poetry, novels, and nonfiction. Their essays examine several major authors and works, and introduce discussions of many others that have received less scholarly attention in the past. General reviews of the current status of Victorian literature in the academic world are followed by essays on such writers as Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and the Brontë sisters. These are balanced by essays that focus on writing by women, the development of the social problem novel, and the continuity of Victorian writers with their Romantic forebears.

Most importantly, the contributors to this volume approach Victorian literature from a decidedly contemporary scholarly angle and write for a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists alike. Their essays offer readers an idea of how critical commentary in recent years has influenced—and in some cases changed radically—our understanding of and approach to literary study in general and the Victorian period in particular. Hence, scholars, teachers, and students will find the volume a useful survey of contemporary commentary not just on Victorian literature, but also on the period as a whole.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 230 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4422-3233-4 • Hardback • March 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4422-3234-1 • eBook • March 2014 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / General

Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Victorian literature’s fascination with the past, its examination of social injustice, and its struggle to deal with the dichotomy between scientific discoveries and religious faith continue to fascinate scholars and contemporary readers. During the past hundred years, traditional formalist and humanist criticism has been augmented by new critical approaches, including feminism and gender studies, psychological criticism, cultural studies, and others.

In Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature, twelve scholars offer new assessments of Victorian poetry, novels, and nonfiction. Their essays examine several major authors and works, and introduce discussions of many others that have received less scholarly attention in the past. General reviews of the current status of Victorian literature in the academic world are followed by essays on such writers as Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and the Brontë sisters. These are balanced by essays that focus on writing by women, the development of the social problem novel, and the continuity of Victorian writers with their Romantic forebears.

Most importantly, the contributors to this volume approach Victorian literature from a decidedly contemporary scholarly angle and write for a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists alike. Their essays offer readers an idea of how critical commentary in recent years has influenced—and in some cases changed radically—our understanding of and approach to literary study in general and the Victorian period in particular. Hence, scholars, teachers, and students will find the volume a useful survey of contemporary commentary not just on Victorian literature, but also on the period as a whole.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 230 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4422-3233-4 • Hardback • March 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4422-3234-1 • eBook • March 2014 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / General

Author

Laurence W. Mazzeno is president emeritus of Alvernia University (Reading, Pennsylvania). He is the author of several books, including The Victorian Novel: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow, 1989) and Victorian Poetry (Scarecrow, 1995), and has written more than two hundred articles and reviews. Mazzeno is the editor of numerous collections, including the multi-volume Masterplots series.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Chapter 1: Victorian Literature: A Cultural and Historical Overview, Jennifer Cadwallader
Chapter 2: “The velocity of the novel-producing apparatus” and “large loose baggy monsters”: The Changing Reputation of the Victorian Novel, Tamara Sylvia Wagner
Chapter 3: Popular Fiction and Social Protest: Dickens in the 1830s, Chris Louttit
Chapter 4: Faith and Doubt: Tennyson and Other Victorian Poets, Saverio Tomaiuolo
Chapter 5: Victorian Romanticism: The Brontë Sisters, Thomas Carlyle, and the Persistence of Memory, Laura Dabundo
Chapter 6: Overt and Covert Narrative Structure: A Reconsideration of Jane Eyre, Katherine Saunders Nash
Chapter 7: What is a Social Problem Novel?, Barbara Leckie
Chapter 8: Matrimony, Property, and the “Woman Question” in Anne Brontë and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Amy J. Robinson
Chapter 9: A “World of Its Own Creation”: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry and the New Paradigm for Art, David Latham
Chapter 10: Matthew Arnold as a Critic: A Twenty-First Century Perspective, Clinton Machann
Chapter 11: Great Expectations, Memories, and Hopes Dashed: Dickens and Late Style, Grace Moore
Chapter 12: Tragedy and Ecology in the Later Novels of Thomas Hardy, Ronald D. Morrison

Further Reading
Contributors

Reviews

Written by a selection of international scholars, these 12 essays deliver on the collection's title. Sometimes, though, perspectives percolate, as they inevitably must, through earlier evaluations of the era. For instance, the first five essays constitute a valuable summary (particularly useful for the uninitiated) of cultural, critical, political, social, and religious issues dominating Victorian consciousness. Laura Dabundo writes perhaps the most charming of these, deftly analyzing the Romanticism of the Brontës and Carlyle. Dickens gets two full chapters, one by Chris Louttit, who treats Oliver Twist as a protest novel and as a bridge between Regency and Victorian fiction, the other by Grace Moore, who argues that Dickens's later fiction 'convey[s] feelings of entrapment and gloom.' The essays are well chosen, not only for scholars but also for those interested in either a quick introduction or a review of major writers and themes. Mazzeno admits to omissions, another inevitability in a collection of this nature, and one wishes that George Eliot, for instance, had not been left out. That aside, the collection is remarkably comprehensive. Summing Up: Highly recommended: Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty.
— Choice Reviews

The volume opens with excellent overviews of Victorian cultural history and the Victorian novel...it continues with insightful analyses.... The volume's superior coverage of canonical texts makes it an excellent primer for undergraduates encountering the Victorian period and for graduate students studying for qualifying exams.
— Victorian Studies

Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature

Edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno

Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature

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