Neo-Victorianism
Subtitle: the Victorians in the twenty-first century, 1999-2009
By: Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn
Contributors: Llewellyn, Mark, 1979-
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 323
ISBN-13: 9780230241138
Subjects: Roman; English literature; Rezeption; History and criticism; Kultur; History in literature; History
Description: This field-defining book offers an extensive interpretation of the most recent, millennial and especially postmillennial figurations of neo-Victorianism published over the last ten years (1999-2009) through a range of critical and cultural viewpoints, while at the same time highlighting the problematic nature of this 'new' genre and its relationship to re-interpretative critical perspectives on the nineteenth century. In its focus on a series of literary-interpretive encounters with the Victorians (and, to a lesser extent, the earlier nineteenth-century period) coupled with a concluding chapter on neo-Victorianism in the wider nostalgic/heritage marketplace, this book provides new insights into the powerful aesthetic, cultural, and metafictional potential of neo-Victorianism while exploring how those possibilities have been employed since the millennium. The six chapters explore questions of aesthetics and ethics; memory, trauma, and inheritance; postcolonialism; sex and science; spectrality and secularity; (neo- )Victorian magic and metatextuality; and adaptation.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 288-310) and index.
Table of contents: title: Neo-Victorianism and post-authenticity : on the ethics and aesthetics of appropriation; title: Memory, mourning, misfortune : ancestral houses and (literary) inheritances; title: Race and empire : postcolonial neo-Victorians; title: Sex and science : bodily and textual (Re)inscriptions; title: Spectrality and S(p)ecularity : some reflections in the glass; title: Doing it with mirrors, or tricks of the trade : neo-Victorian metatextual magic; title: The way we adapt now : or, the neo-Victorian theme park.