Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920

Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920

Author: Pamela Thurschwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-07-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1139428853

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In this 2001 book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. Thurschwell argues that technologies began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on: they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Talking to the dead and talking on the phone both held out the promise of previously unimaginable contact between people: both seemed to involve 'magical thinking'. Thurschwell looks at the ways in which psychical research, the scientific study of the occult, is reflected in the writings of such authors as Henry James, George du Maurier and Oscar Wilde, and in the foundations of psychoanalysis. This study offers provocative interpretations of fin-de-siècle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history.


The Rise of English Studies

The Rise of English Studies

Author: David John Palmer

Publisher: London ; New York : Published for the University of Hull by the Oxford University Press

Published: 1965

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13:

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Sound and Modernity in the Literature of London, 1880-1918

Sound and Modernity in the Literature of London, 1880-1918

Author: Patricia Pye

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1137540176

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This book explores the literary representation of late Victorian and early Edwardian London from an auditory perspective, arguing that readers should ‘listen’ to impressions of the city, as described by writers such as Conrad, Doyle, Ford and Gissing. It was in this period that London began to ‘sound modern’ and, through a closer hearing of its literature, writers’ wider responses to modernity are revealed. The book is structured into familiar modernist themes, revisiting time and space, social progress and popular culture through an exploration of the sound impressions of some key works. Each chapter is contextualized by these themes, revealing how the sound of the news, social protest, music hall and suburbanization impacted on writers’ literary imaginations. Suitable for students of modernist literature and specialists in sound studies, this book will also appeal to readers with a wider interest in London’s history and popular culture between 1880-1918.


Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture

Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture

Author: Monika Pietrzak-Franger

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-06-08

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 3319495356

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This book addresses the evident but unexplored intertwining of visibility and invisibility in the discourses around syphilis. A rethinking of the disease with reference to its ambiguous status, and the ways of seeing that it generated, helps reconsider the network of socio-cultural and political interrelations which were negotiated through syphilis, thereby also raising larger questions about its function in the construction of individual, national and imperial identities. This book is the first large-scale interdisciplinary study of syphilis in late Victorian Britain whose significance lies in its unprecedented attention to the multimedia and multi-discursive evocations of syphilis. An examination of the heterogeneous sources that it offers, many of which have up to this point escaped critical attention, makes it possible to reveal the complex and poly-ideological reasons for the activation of syphilis imagery and its symbolic function in late Victorian culture.


Serials to Graphic Novels

Serials to Graphic Novels

Author: Catherine J. Golden

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2018-10-01

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0813063736

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The Victorian illustrated book came into being, flourished, and evolved during the long nineteenth century. While existing scholarship on Victorian illustrators largely centers on the realist artists of the "Sixties," this volume examines the entire lifetime of the Victorian illustrated book. Catherine Golden offers a new framework for viewing the arc of this vibrant genre, arguing that it arose from and continually built on the creative vision of the caricature-style illustrators of the 1830s. She surveys the fluidity of illustration styles across serial installments, British and American periodicals, adult and children’s literature, and--more recently--graphic novels. Serials to Graphic Novels examines widely recognized illustrated texts, such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit, and Trilby. Golden explores factors that contributed to the early popularity of the illustrated book—the growth of commodity culture, a rise in literacy, new printing technologies—and that ultimately created a mass market for illustrated fiction. Golden identifies present-day visual adaptations of the works of Austen, Dickens, and Trollope as well as original Neo-Victorian graphic novels like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Victorian-themed novels like Batman: Noël as the heirs to the Victorian illustrated book. With these adaptations and additions, the Victorian canon has been refashioned and repurposed visually for new generations of readers.


Telegraphic Realism

Telegraphic Realism

Author: Richard Menke

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780804756914

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Telegraphic Realism demonstrates the connections between British nineteenth-century fiction, media technologies, and developing ideas about information, from the postage stamp to wireless.