Title: Victorian unfinished novels : the imperfect page /
Authors: Tomaiuolo, Saverio.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2012
Subjects: English fiction History and criticism; Unfinished books.; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General.; LITERARY CRITICISM / General.; English fiction; Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 English.; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers English.; Literature.; Unfinished books
Abstract: The first detailed study on the subject of Victorian unfinished novels, this book explores the notion of incompleteness in major novelists such as Charlotte Bront͡, Elizabeth Gaskell, W.M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, R.L. Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins and Henry James. The aim of this book is to shed further light on novels that have been neglected by critical studies (Thackeray's Denis Duval, Stevenson's St. Ives, Trollope's The Landleaguers, and Wilkie Collins's Blind Love), and to focus in a new way on critically acclaimed masterpieces (Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston). The incomplete nature of these texts has sometimes prevented literary critics from approaching them as the last important narrative testimonies on topics cogently related to Victorian culture, such as the question of moral corruption, the crisis of old narrative forms, the changing roles of ladies and gentlemen in society, the necessity of idealism in an 'age of incredulity' and the incongruities of imperial politics. This book thus offers a counter-reading of the nineteenth-century literary canon through the perspective offered by the issue of 'unending'. Using extensive quotations from primary texts, and applying an engaging and lively close analysis, Victorian Unfinished Novels: The Imperfect Page also raises thought-provoking questions on the alleged impossibility of a closed narrative ending, and on the idea of literary creation at large.
Contents: Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: The Sense of Unending: Closing Charlotte Bronté's Emma -- Becoming Ladies and Gentlemen in W. M. Thackeray's Denis Duval and Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Decomposition of Forms -- The Strange Case of Weir of Hermiston and St. Ives: R.L. Stevenson's Last Adventures in Narration -- Time Changes: Anthony Trollope's The Landleaguers and Wilkie Collins's Blind Love -- Conclusion: Henry James Sensing the Past -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.