Time and the moment in Victorian literature and society
By: Sue Zemka
Series: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture -- 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9781107007420
Subjects: Literature and society; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Time in literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literature and technology; English fiction; Time perception in literature; History
Description: "Sudden changes, opportunities or revelations have always carried a special significance in western culture, from the Greek and later the Christian kairos to Evangelical experiences of conversion. This fascinating book explores the ways in which England, under the influence of industrialising forces and increased precision in assessing the passing of time, attached importance to moments and events that compress great significance into small units of time. Sue Zemka questions the importance that modernity invests in momentary events, from religion to aesthetics and philosophy. She argues for a strain in Victorian and early modern novels critical of the values the age invested in moments of time, and suggests that such novels also offer a correction to contemporary culture and criticism, with its emphasis on the momentary event as an agency of change"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.263-278) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. A brief history of the moment; 2. The economic mediation of time; 3. Pie'd: the moment in mid-Victorian working-class fiction; 4. Dickens's peripatetic novels; 5. Adam Bede and the redemption of time; 6. Daniel Deronda: Eliot's anti-epiphanic novel; 7. Panic in Lord Jim; Conclusion: lost duration.