Heretical Hellenism
Subtitle: women writers, ancient Greece, and the Victorian popular imagination
By: Shanyn Fiske.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9780821418178
Subjects: English literature -- Greek influences; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Popular literature -- Great Britain -- History and criticism; Greek literature -- Appreciation -- Great Britain; Hellenism in literature; Classicism -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Civilization -- Greek influences; Greece -- In literature
Description: "The prevailing assumption regarding the Victorians' relationship to ancient Greece is that Greek knowledge constituted an exclusive discourse within elite male domains. Heretical Hellenism: Women Writers, Ancient Greece, and the Victorian Popular Imagination challenges that theory and argues that while the information women received from popular sources was fragmentary and often fostered intellectual insecurities, it was precisely the ineffability of the Greek world refracted through popular sources and reconceived through new fields of study that appealed to women writers' imaginations." "Examining underconsidered sources such as theater history and popular journals, Shanyn Fiske uncovers the many ways that women acquired knowledge of Greek literature, history, and philosophy without formal classical training. Through discussions of women writers such as Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Jane Harrison, Heretical Hellenism demonstrates that women established the foundations of a heretical challenge to traditional humanist assumptions about the uniformity of classical knowledge and about women's place in literary history." --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Hellenism and heresy; title: Victorian Medea: from sensationalism to subjectivity; title: Fragments of genius: Charlotte Brontë and the discourse of popular Greek; title: Heretical humanism: Romola and Hellenism's distaff legacy; title: The Daimon archives: Jane Harrison and the afterlife of dead languages; title: Afterword: the First World War and the death of heresy.