Enacting Englishness In The Victorian Period

Angelia Poon examines how British colonial authority in the nineteenth century was predicated on its being rendered in ways that were recognizably 'English'. Reading a range of texts by authors that include Charlotte Brontë, Mary Seacole, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, and H. Rider Haggard, Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period focuses on the strategies - narrative, illustrative, and rhetorical - used to perform English subjectivity during the time of the British Empire. Characterising these performances, which ranged from the playful, ironic, and fantastical to the morally serious and determinedly didactic, was an emphasis on the corporeal body as not only gendered, racialised, and classed, but as (in)visible, desiring, bound in particular ways to space, and marked by certain physical stylizations and ways of thinking. As she shines a light on the English subject in the act of being and becoming, Poon casts new light on the changing historical circumstances and discontinuities in the performances of Englishness to disclose both the normative power of colonial authority as well as the possibilities for resistance.

Through an examination of Tennyson's 'domestic poetry' - his portrayals of England and the English - in their changing nineteenth-century context, this book demonstrates that many of his representations were 'fabrications', more idealized than real, which played a vital part in the country's developing identity and sense of its place in the world.

The House, the World, and the Theatre departs from three ideologically resonant spatial metaphors to explore key aspects of nineteenth-century literature and culture. At the centre of the discussion is the way authors fashioned themselves to cater to ever-expanding audiences and to the new conditions of publishing. The prefaces of Hawthorne, Dickens, and James illustrate the conflicts underlying the new forms of self-definition in the nineteenth century and mediate the perception of authorship as a category that blurs the boundaries between social life and performance. This book combines genre criticism, new historicism, literary history, and contemporary perspectives in readings that show the imaginative quality of prefatory writing and the enduring relevance of canonical authors in the twenty-first century.

Over a century after the death of Queen Victoria, historians are busy re-appraising her age and achievements. However, our understanding of the Victorian era is itself a part of history, shaped by changing political, cultural and intellectual fashions. Bringing together a group of international scholars from the disciplines of history, English literature, art history and cultural studies, this book identifies and assesses the principal influences on twentieth-century attitudes towards the Victorians. Developments in academia, popular culture, public history and the internet are covered in this important and stimulating collection, and the final chapters anticipate future global trends in interpretations of the Victorian era, making an essential volume for students of Victorian Studies.

The Victorians are known for their commitment to materialism, evidenced by the dominance of empiricism in the sciences and realism in fiction. Yet there were other strains of thinking during the period in the physical sciences, social sciences, and literature that privileged the spaces between the material and immaterial. This book examines how the emerging language of the “imponderable” helped Victorian writers and physicists make sense of new experiences of modernity. As Sarah Alexander argues, while Victorian physicists were theorizing ether, energy and entropy, and non-Euclidean space and atom theories, writers such as Charles Dickens, William Morris, and Joseph Conrad used concepts of the imponderable to explore key issues of capitalism, imperialism, and social unrest.

Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation is the story of the development of English children's literature, focusing on how stories inspire children to adhere to the values of society. Such English authors as Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling have entertained, inspired, confronted social wrongs, and transmitted cultural values--functions previously associated with folklore. Their stories form a new folklore tradition that grounds personal identity, provides social glue, and supports a love of England and English values. This book examines how this tradition came to fruition.

A discussion of the Victorians and their literature. It sets out the political, social and economic framework of the period, and then goes on to study the various influences on the novel, addresses the forms and styles of poetry and, finally, provides an overview of Victorian drama. Each chapter features a further reading list and there is a comparative time-line, a biographical glossary and a list of websites. The volume is part of a series which sets writers and literary works of different types and periods in their historical, social and cultural context and provides an introduction to various genres.

It is often taken for granted that holiday resorts sell intangible commodities such as freedom, enjoyment, pleasure, and relaxation. But how did the desire for a 'happy holiday' emerge, how was 'the right to rest' legitimized, and how are emotions produced by commercial enterprises? To answer these questions, The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking explores the rise of popular holidaymaking in late-nineteenth-century Britain, which is generally considered to be the birthplace of mass tourism. Drawing on a wide range of texts, including medical literature, parliamentary debates, advertisements, travel guides, popular stories, and personal accounts, the book unravels the role emotions played in British spa and seaside holiday cultures. Introducing the concept of an 'emotional economy', Yaara Benger Alaluf traces the overlapping impact that psychological and economic thought had on moral ideals and performative practices of work and leisure. Through a vivid account of changing attitudes toward health, pleasure, social class, and gender in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, she explains why the democratization of holidaymaking went hand in hand with its emotionalization. Combining the history of emotions with the sociology of commodification, the book offers an innovative approach to the study of the leisure and entertainment industries and a better understanding of how medicalized conceptions of emotions influenced people's dispositions, desires, consumption habits, and civil rights. Looking ahead to the central place of tourism in twenty-first century societies and its relation to stress and burnout, The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking calls on future research of past and present leisure cultures to take emotions seriously and to rethink notions of rationality, authenticity, and agency.