Romantic Friendship in Victorian Literature (The Nineteenth Century Series)
Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co
Published: August 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 178
ISBN-13: 9780754658696
Subjects: Literary studies: 19th century; c 1800 to c 1900; Literary Criticism; English; General; 19th century; English literature; Friendship in literature; History and criticism; Male friendship in literature
Description: "Carolyn Oulton recovers the strategies nineteenth-century authors used to justify the ideal of same-sex romantic friendship and the anxieties these strategies reveal. Informed by recent insights into the erotic potential of such relationships, but focused on romantic friendship as an independent and fully formulated ideal, Oulton departs from other critics who view romantic friendship as either nebulous and culturally naive or an invocation of homoerotic responsiveness." "By considering both male and female friendships, Oulton uncovers surprising parallels between them in novels and poetry by authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Disraeli, Charlotte Bronte, and Braddon. Oulton also examines conduct manuals, periodicals, and religious treatises, tracing developments from mid-century to the fin de siecle, when romantic friendship first came under serious attack. Her book is a challenge to those who view mid-Victorian England, existing in a state of blissful pre-Freudian innocence, as unproblematically accommodating of passionate same-sex relationships."--BOOK JACKET.