Nineteenth Century Literature

What does it mean to focus on the decade as a unit of literary history? Emerging from the shadows of iconic Victorian authors such as Eliot and Tennyson, the 1880s is a decade that has been too readily overlooked in the rush to embrace end-of-century decadence and aestheticism. The 1880s witnessed new developments in transatlantic networks, experiments in lyric poetry, the decline of the three-volume novel, and the revaluation of authors, journalists and the reading public. The contributors to this collection explore the case for the 1880s as both a discrete point of literary production, with its own pressures and provocations, and as part of literature's sense of its expanded temporal and geographical reach. The essays address a wide variety of authors, topics and genres, offering incisive readings of the diverse forces at work in the shaping of the literary 1880s.

Investigates the relationship between 19th-century political events and attitudes and prophetic propagandistic, and revolutionary literary expression.

Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature presents nine essays that reread major British, American, and European nineteenth-century literary texts in light of the post-deconstruction ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. The first section pursues in essays on Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, and Baudelaire connections between Levinas's radical rethinking of subjectivity and Romantic generic, aesthetic, and conceptual innovation. The second section explores how Levinas's analysis of totalizing thought may illuminate how Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Douglass, Susan Warner, and Melville grapple with American experience and culture. The third section considers the relevance of Levinas's work for reassessments of the realist novel through essays on Austen, Dickens, and George Eliot. Essay authors are A.C. Goodson, David P. Haney, E.S. Burt, Alain Paul Toumayan, N.S. Boone, Lorna Wood, Donald R. Wehrs, Melvyn New, and Rachel Hollander. Donald R. Wehrs is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University. David P. Haney is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of English at Appalachian State University.

Teaching nineteenth-century literature can be an incredibly rewarding experience, resulting in lessons which are exciting and engaging and enable amazing levels of student progress. This essential handbook guides teachers through the key events of the period, offering theoretical approaches and a wealth of practical ideas for teaching nineteenth-century fiction and poetry in the secondary classroom. Supporting and inspiring teachers as they introduce nineteenth-century texts to their students and nurture their interest and enthusiasm for the genre, Teaching Nineteenth-Century Literature provides a grounding in the major historical events of the nineteenth century, describes pedagogical approaches to teaching fiction and poetry, and offers step-by-step guidance on the use of literary resources. Chapters offer advice on overcoming the particular challenges of the genre, including unwieldy plots, complex vocabulary and unfamiliar sentence structures, and illustrate how texts from the period can be made fully accessible to even the youngest pupils. With a range of detailed activities, photocopiable lesson plans, case studies and extracts for use in the classroom, teachers will be able to quickly and easily build a scheme of work that is stimulating and beneficial for children of varying abilities. Equipping teachers with the knowledge, understanding and resources they need to teach nineteenth-century literature in an engaging, inspiring and intellectually stimulating way, this practical and accessible text will be an invaluable resource for secondary school English teachers, students and trainees.

The 19th century volume demonstrates the variety of English literature in an age of social, intellectual, religious and scientific ferment. The shift to Romanticism is portrayed with extracts from major figures such as Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge and the contribution of women writers is fully recognised, with selections from Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Elizabeth Gaskell. The anthology concludes with selections of Victorian poetry and extracts from Wilde and Stevenson and altogether offers a comprehensive sample of the vast treasure-house of 19th century literature.

This book provides fresh perspectives on the object world, embodied experience and materiality in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Contributors explore canonical works by Austen, Brontë, Dickens and James, alongside less-familiar texts and a range of objects including nineteenth-century automata, scrapbooks, museum exhibits and antiques.