The Victorian Novel

by Barbara Dennis

• ISBN13: 9780521775953
• ISBN10: 0521775957
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Victorian Novel is a new title in the Cambridge Contexts in Literature series. It is designed to support the needs of advanced level students of English literature. Each title in the series has the quality, content and level endorsed by the OCR examination board. However, the texts provide the background and focus suitable for any examination board at advanced level. The series explores the contextual study of texts by concentrating on key periods, topics and comparisons in literature. Each book adopts an interactive approach and provides the background for understanding the significance of literary, historical and social contexts. Students are encouraged to investigate different interpretations that may be applied to literary texts by different readers, through a variety of activities and questions, the use of study aids, such as chronologies and glossaries, and the inclusion of anthology sections to exemplify issues.

Table of Contents

Introduction	6	(4)
Approaching the Victorian novel	10	(41)
The Victorian scene	10	(6)
The novel and the middle class	16	(5)
The industrial scene	21	(5)
Religion	26	(7)
The Empire	33	(2)
Politics	35	(2)
The analysis of society	37	(4)
The intellectual novel	41	(5)
Victorian twilight	46	(5)
Assignments	50	(1)
Approaching the texts	51	(18)
`A novel-reading people'	51	(3)
Women novelists	54	(3)
Conventions of the novel	57	(3)
The author and reader	60	(3)
The publisher and reader	63	(2)
Parodies	65	(4)
Assignments	68	(1)
Texts and extracts	69	(20)
Thomas Carlyle
from `Signs of the Times'	69	(1)
from Past and Present	70	(1)
Charlotte Bronte
from Jane Eyre	71	(1)
John Henry Newman
from Loss and Gain	72	(2)
Charles Dickens
from David Copperfield	74	(1)
from Hard Times	75	(2)
Anthony Trollope
from Barchester Towers	77	(1)
Dinah Mulock (Mrs Craik)
from John Halifax, Gentleman	78	(1)
George Eliot
from Adam Bede	79	(2)
from Felix Holt, the `Address to Working Men'	81	(1)
Anthony Trollope
from The Way We Live Now	82	(2)
Mrs Humphry Ward
from Robert Elsmere	84	(2)
Max Beerbohm
`The Feast' from A Christmas Garland	86	(3)
Critical approaches	89	(20)
The developing debate on the novel	89	(1)
The Humanist School: David Cecil and Early Victorian Novelists	89	(4)
The New Criticism: F.R. Leavis and The Great Tradition	93	(1)
Formalism: Dorothy Van Ghent and The English Novel: Form and Function	94	(1)
Sociological criticism: Arnold Kettle and Introduction to the English Novel	95	(3)
Psychological criticism	98	(2)
Feminist criticism	100	(1)
Post-colonial criticism	101	(1)
Other recent critical approaches	102	(3)
The place of parody	105	(1)
20th-century writers writing back	106	(3)
Assignments	108	(1)
How to write about the Victorian novel	109	(9)
Parallel texts	109	(1)
What kind of a novel is it?	110	(1)
Identifying the author's aims	111	(2)
Plot and characterisation	113	(1)
Speech	114	(1)
Locale	115	(1)
Interpretation and critical perspectives	115	(3)
Assignments	116	(2)
Resources	118	(9)
Alphabetical list of authors	118	(2)
Chronology	120	(2)
Further reading	122	(2)
Glossary	124	(3)
Index	127