Overview
Looks at the how and why of “Victorian Jane,” approaching the relationship between Austen and the Victorians through the lens of the heroine
Provides a focused entry into a wide range of literary texts and contexts and engages Victorian conversations about gender, literature, and national identity
Reveals not only additional dimensions of Austen’s work but also illuminates how the Victorians approached and attempted to reconcile questions about literature, society, culture, and history through their engagement with the figure of the heroine
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book uses the figure of the Victorian heroine as a lens through which to examine Jane Austen’s presence in Victorian critical and popular writings. Aimed at Victorianist readers and scholars, the book focuses on the ways in which Austen was constructed in fiction, criticism, and biography over the course of the nineteenth century. For the Victorians, Austen became a kind of cultural shorthand, representing a distant, yet not too-distant, historical past that the Victorians both drew on and defined themselves against with regard to such topics as gender, literature, and national identity. Austen influenced the development of the Victorian literary heroine, and when cast as a heroine herself, was deployed in debates about the responsibilities of the novelist and the ability of fiction to shape social and cultural norms. Thus, the study is as much, if not more, about the Victorians than it is about Jane Austen.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Cheryl A. Wilson is Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of English at Stevenson University, USA. She is the author of Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Fashioning the Silver Fork Novel, co-editor of Michael Field and Their World, and editor of Byron: Heritage and Legacy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Jane Austen and the Victorian Heroine
Authors: Cheryl A. Wilson
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62965-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-62964-3Published: 20 September 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87440-1Published: 11 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-62965-0Published: 05 September 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 214
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature, British and Irish Literature