R&L Logo R&L Logo
  • GENERAL
    • Browse by Subjects
    • New Releases
    • Coming Soon
    • Chases's Calendar
  • ACADEMIC
    • Textbooks
    • Browse by Course
    • Instructor's Copies
    • Monographs & Research
    • Reference
  • PROFESSIONAL
    • Education
    • Intelligence & Security
    • Library Services
    • Business & Leadership
    • Museum Studies
    • Music
    • Pastoral Resources
    • Psychotherapy
  • FREUD SET
Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
share of facebook share on twitter
Add to GoodReads

Romanticism, Gender, and Violence

Blake to George Sodini

Nowell Marshall

Combining queer theory with theories of affect, psychoanalysis, and Foucauldian genealogy, Romanticism, Gender, and Violence: Blake to George Sodini theorizes performative melancholia, a condition where, regardless of sexual orientation, overinvestment in gender norms causes subjects who are unable to embody those norms to experience socially expected (‘normal’) gender as something unattainable or lost. This perceived loss causes an ambivalence within the subject that can lead to self-inflicted violence (masochism, suicide) or violence toward others (sadism, murder). Reading a range of Romantic poetry and novels between 1790-1820, but ultimately moving beyond the period to show its contemporary cultural relevance through readings of Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, and George Sodini’s 2009 murder-suicide case, this study argues that we need to move beyond focusing on bullying, teens, and LGBT students and look at our cultural investment in gender normativity itself. Doing so allows us to recognize that the relationship between non-normative gender performance and violence is not simply a gay problem; it is a human problem that can affect people of any sex, sexuality, age, race, or ethnicity and one that we can trace back to the Romantic period. Bringing late 18th-century novels into conversation with both canonical and lesser-known Romantic poetry, allows us to see that, as people whose performance of gender occasionally exceeds the normal, we too often internalize these norms and punish ourselves or others for our inability to adhere to them. Contrasting paired chapters by male and female authors and including sections on failed romantic coupling, melancholic femininities, melancholic masculinities, failed gender performance and madness, and ending with a section titled After Romanticism, this study works on multiple levels to complicate previous understandings of gender and violence in Romanticism while also offering a model for contemporary issues relating to gender and violence among people who ‘fail’ to perform gender according to social norms.
  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press
Pages: 244 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-61148-466-3 • Hardback • July 2013 • $113.00 • (£87.00)
978-1-61148-818-0 • Paperback • February 2017 • $55.99 • (£43.00)
978-1-61148-467-0 • eBook • July 2013 • $53.00 • (£41.00)
Subjects: Literary Criticism / Gothic & Romance, Literary Criticism / General, Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / LGBT
Nowell Marshall is assistant professor of literary theory at Rider University in New Jersey.
Introduction
Gender Normativity, Failure, and Violence from Romanticism to George Sodini
Section One: Romantic Coupling, Failure, and Melancholia

Social Bond(age)s in Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Rethinking Burney, Gender, and Violence:
Camilla and the Masochistic Contract
Section Two: Melancholic Femininities

“Corrupt Nature”: Performative Melancholia and Violence in Zofloya
Siren Songs: Maggie Tulliver, Music, and Performative Melancholia in
The Mill on the Floss
Section Three: Melancholic Masculinities

Monstrosity and Failed Masculinity in The Giaour
Competition and Melancholic Masculinity in
Caleb Williams
Section Four: Abandonment, Performative Melancholia, and Madness

Performative Melancholia and the Gothic Body in Wordsworth and Shelley
Amelia Opie’s
The Father and Daughter: Female Masochism and Male Madness
Section Five: After Romanticism

Refusing Butler’s Binary: Bisexuality and Performative Melancholia in Mrs. Dalloway
Heternormativity and Performative Melancholia in
Dancer from the Dance

It is a rare thing—a work of literary criticism and history that also issues an important call to contemporary social change. . . .Marshall’s message . . . is a welcome and timely one, and he succeeds in delivering it in a convincing and well-historicized medium of cultural analysis. . . .Nothing gets in the way of the power of Marshall’s reading and the saliency of his argument. This is an ambitious, clever, and important book—a major contribution for those of us who study Romanticism, and an awakening for us all.
— Eighteenth-Century Fiction


Marshall examines the effects of performative melancholia in Romantic authors from Blake to George Sodidi, citing examples from their recordings of loves lost and regretted, failures, abandonment, and madness. Marshall begins by refining performative melancholia, giving as its parameters coupling, failure, and melancholia; he tests his theory on Vision of the Daughters of Albion and Camilla, then covers feminine (Zofloya and Mill on the Floss) and masculine (The Giroux) melancholia. Then Marshal concentrates on extreme forms of abandonment and madness from Shelley and Wordsworth, and Amelia Opie's The Father and Daughter. Marshall closes with a fascinating foray into post-romanticism with Mrs. Dalloway and Dancer from the Dance by Holleran.
— Book News, Inc.


Romanticism, Gender, and Violence

Blake to George Sodini

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • Combining queer theory with theories of affect, psychoanalysis, and Foucauldian genealogy, Romanticism, Gender, and Violence: Blake to George Sodini theorizes performative melancholia, a condition where, regardless of sexual orientation, overinvestment in gender norms causes subjects who are unable to embody those norms to experience socially expected (‘normal’) gender as something unattainable or lost. This perceived loss causes an ambivalence within the subject that can lead to self-inflicted violence (masochism, suicide) or violence toward others (sadism, murder). Reading a range of Romantic poetry and novels between 1790-1820, but ultimately moving beyond the period to show its contemporary cultural relevance through readings of Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, and George Sodini’s 2009 murder-suicide case, this study argues that we need to move beyond focusing on bullying, teens, and LGBT students and look at our cultural investment in gender normativity itself. Doing so allows us to recognize that the relationship between non-normative gender performance and violence is not simply a gay problem; it is a human problem that can affect people of any sex, sexuality, age, race, or ethnicity and one that we can trace back to the Romantic period. Bringing late 18th-century novels into conversation with both canonical and lesser-known Romantic poetry, allows us to see that, as people whose performance of gender occasionally exceeds the normal, we too often internalize these norms and punish ourselves or others for our inability to adhere to them. Contrasting paired chapters by male and female authors and including sections on failed romantic coupling, melancholic femininities, melancholic masculinities, failed gender performance and madness, and ending with a section titled After Romanticism, this study works on multiple levels to complicate previous understandings of gender and violence in Romanticism while also offering a model for contemporary issues relating to gender and violence among people who ‘fail’ to perform gender according to social norms.
Details
Details
  • University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press
    Pages: 244 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
    978-1-61148-466-3 • Hardback • July 2013 • $113.00 • (£87.00)
    978-1-61148-818-0 • Paperback • February 2017 • $55.99 • (£43.00)
    978-1-61148-467-0 • eBook • July 2013 • $53.00 • (£41.00)
    Subjects: Literary Criticism / Gothic & Romance, Literary Criticism / General, Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / LGBT
Author
Author
  • Nowell Marshall is assistant professor of literary theory at Rider University in New Jersey.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Introduction
    Gender Normativity, Failure, and Violence from Romanticism to George Sodini
    Section One: Romantic Coupling, Failure, and Melancholia

    Social Bond(age)s in Visions of the Daughters of Albion
    Rethinking Burney, Gender, and Violence:
    Camilla and the Masochistic Contract
    Section Two: Melancholic Femininities

    “Corrupt Nature”: Performative Melancholia and Violence in Zofloya
    Siren Songs: Maggie Tulliver, Music, and Performative Melancholia in
    The Mill on the Floss
    Section Three: Melancholic Masculinities

    Monstrosity and Failed Masculinity in The Giaour
    Competition and Melancholic Masculinity in
    Caleb Williams
    Section Four: Abandonment, Performative Melancholia, and Madness

    Performative Melancholia and the Gothic Body in Wordsworth and Shelley
    Amelia Opie’s
    The Father and Daughter: Female Masochism and Male Madness
    Section Five: After Romanticism

    Refusing Butler’s Binary: Bisexuality and Performative Melancholia in Mrs. Dalloway
    Heternormativity and Performative Melancholia in
    Dancer from the Dance

Reviews
Reviews
  • It is a rare thing—a work of literary criticism and history that also issues an important call to contemporary social change. . . .Marshall’s message . . . is a welcome and timely one, and he succeeds in delivering it in a convincing and well-historicized medium of cultural analysis. . . .Nothing gets in the way of the power of Marshall’s reading and the saliency of his argument. This is an ambitious, clever, and important book—a major contribution for those of us who study Romanticism, and an awakening for us all.
    — Eighteenth-Century Fiction


    Marshall examines the effects of performative melancholia in Romantic authors from Blake to George Sodidi, citing examples from their recordings of loves lost and regretted, failures, abandonment, and madness. Marshall begins by refining performative melancholia, giving as its parameters coupling, failure, and melancholia; he tests his theory on Vision of the Daughters of Albion and Camilla, then covers feminine (Zofloya and Mill on the Floss) and masculine (The Giroux) melancholia. Then Marshal concentrates on extreme forms of abandonment and madness from Shelley and Wordsworth, and Amelia Opie's The Father and Daughter. Marshall closes with a fascinating foray into post-romanticism with Mrs. Dalloway and Dancer from the Dance by Holleran.
    — Book News, Inc.


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Cover image for the book Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision
  • Cover image for the book In Darkest London: The Gothic Cityscape in Victorian Literature
  • Cover image for the book Romantic Ecocriticism: Origins and Legacies
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Gothic Literature
  • Cover image for the book The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790–1910
  • Cover image for the book A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English: Print and Electronic Sources
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature
  • Cover image for the book Nature, Politics, and the Arts: Essays on Romantic Culture for Carl Woodring
  • Cover image for the book Dark Assemblages: Pilar Pedraza and the Gothic Story of Development
  • Cover image for the book City Of Nature: Journeys to Nature in the Age of American Romanticism
  • Cover image for the book The Catherian Cathedral: Gothic Cathedral Iconography in Willa Cather's Fiction
  • Cover image for the book Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision
  • Cover image for the book In Darkest London: The Gothic Cityscape in Victorian Literature
  • Cover image for the book Romantic Ecocriticism: Origins and Legacies
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Gothic Literature
  • Cover image for the book The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790–1910
  • Cover image for the book A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English: Print and Electronic Sources
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature
  • Cover image for the book Nature, Politics, and the Arts: Essays on Romantic Culture for Carl Woodring
  • Cover image for the book Dark Assemblages: Pilar Pedraza and the Gothic Story of Development
  • Cover image for the book City Of Nature: Journeys to Nature in the Age of American Romanticism
  • Cover image for the book The Catherian Cathedral: Gothic Cathedral Iconography in Willa Cather's Fiction
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linked in icon NEWSLETTERS
ABOUT US
  • Mission Statement
  • Employment
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility Statement
CONTACT
  • Company Directory
  • Publicity and Media Queries
  • Rights and Permissions
  • Textbook Resource Center
AUTHOR RESOURCES
  • Royalty Contact
  • Production Guidelines
  • Manuscript Submissions
ORDERING INFORMATION
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • National Book Network
  • Ingram Publisher Services UK
  • Special Sales
  • International Sales
  • eBook Partners
  • Digital Catalogs
IMPRINTS
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • Lexington Books
  • Hamilton Books
  • Applause Books
  • Amadeus Press
  • Backbeat Books
  • Bernan
  • Hal Leonard Books
  • Limelight Editions
  • Co-Publishing Partners
  • Globe Pequot
  • Down East Books
  • Falcon Guides
  • Gooseberry Patch
  • Lyons Press
  • Muddy Boots
  • Pineapple Press
  • TwoDot Books
  • Stackpole Books
PARTNERS
  • American Alliance of Museums
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • Brookings Institution Press
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
  • Fortress Press
  • The Foundation for Critical Thinking
  • Lehigh University Press
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Other Partners...