Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy

Brigid Lowe

Description

This ground-breaking study of sympathetic readings in Victorian fiction breathes new life into contemporary literary criticism.

This book explores the importance of sympathy as a central idea behind Victorian fiction, and an animating principle of novel reading generally. Sympathy, Brigid Lowe argues, deserves a much more important role as both a subject and a guiding principle for literary criticism.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: Critical Missiles and Sympathetic Ink; Charles Dickens, Uncommercial Space-Time Traveller: Dombey and Son and the Ethics of History; Other People’s Shoes: Realism, Imagination and Sympathy; The Personal, the Political and the Human, Part I: Sympathy – a Family Affair?; The Personal, the Political and the Human, Part II: Which Family Values?; The Personal, the Political and the Human, Part III: ‘The Torn Nest is Pierced by the Thorns’ – Sympathy after the Family; Envoi: Symathetic Magic; Bibliography; Index

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843317746
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy

Anthem Nineteenth Century Studies

Series editor: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Tim Youngs (ed.)Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century(2006) David Clifford, Elisabeth Wadge, Alex Warwick and Martin Willis (eds) Repositioning Victorian Sciences(2006) Ian St JohnDisraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics(2005) John D RosenbergElegy for an Age(2005) Anne-Julia Zwierlein (ed.)Unmapped Countries(2005) Michael DiamondVictorian Sensation(2004) Kirstie BlairJohn Keble in Context(2004) David Clifford and Laurence Roussillon (eds)Outsiders Looking In(2004) Simon JamesUnsettled Accounts(2003) Bharat TandonJane Austen and the Morality of Conversation(2003)

Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy

An Alternative to the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Brigid Lowe

Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2007 by ANTHEM PRESS 7576 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

Brigid Lowe © 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

ISBN 184331 233 6 (Hbk) ISBN13978 1 84331 233 8 (Hbk)

Cover illustration:‘Portrait of Juliette Courbet as a Sleeping Child,’1841. Courtesy of Photo RMN. © JeanGilles Berizzi.

Printed in India

For My Mother

… that splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together. —Karl Marx

I cannot forego [the] opportunity of saying farewell to my readers in this greeting-place, though I have only to acknowledge the unbounded warmth and earnestness of their sympathy in every stage of the journey we have just concluded. —Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Introduction: Critical Missiles and Sympathetic Ink 1. Charles Dickens, Uncommercial Space-Time Traveller: Dombey and Sonand the Ethics of History 2. Other People’s Shoes: Realism, Imagination and Sympathy 3. The Personal, the Political and the Human,  Part I: Sympathy – a Family Affair? 4. The Personal, the Political and the Human,  Part II: Which Family Values? 5. The Personal, the Political and the Human,  Part III: ‘The Torn Nest is Pierced by the Thorns’–  Sympathy after the Family Envoi: Sympathetic Magic Bibliography Index

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