The World in Play [electronic resource] : Portraits of a Victorial Concept
Kaiser, Matthew.
Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press,
[2012]
Nineteenth-century Britain was a world in play. The Victorians invented the weekend and built hundreds of parks and playgrounds. In the wake of Darwin, they re-imagined nature as a contest for survival. The playful child became a symbol of the future. A world in play means two things: a world in flux and a world trapped, like Alice in Wonderland, in a ludic microcosm of itself. The book explores the extent to which play (competition, leisure, mischief, luck, festivity, imagination) pervades nineteenth-century literature and culture and forms the foundations of the modern self. Pla
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Copyright; Title Page; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: A Modern Sensation; PART I The World in Play; 1 Mapping the World in Play; PART II Portraits; 2 Fair Play in an Ugly World: The Politics of Nautical Melodrama; 3 Toying with the Future in Wuthering Heights; 4 A Joy on the Precipice of Death: Muir and Stevenson in California; 5 Wilde's Folly; Notes; Index
Nineteenth-century Britain was a world in play. The Victorians invented the weekend and built hundreds of parks and playgrounds. In the wake of Darwin, they re-imagined nature as a contest for survival. The playful child became a symbol of the future. A world in play means two things: a world in flux and a world trapped, like Alice in Wonderland, in a ludic microcosm of itself. The book explores the extent to which play (competition, leisure, mischief, luck, festivity, imagination) pervades nineteenth-century literature and culture and forms the foundations of the modern self. Pla
Description based on print version record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
English literature - 19th century - History and criticism.
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Play in literature.
Play in literature.
English literature
Play in literature
English
Languages & Literatures
English Literature