Victorian renovations of the novel : narrative annexes and the boundries of representation / Suzanne Keen.

By:

Keen, Suzanne

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 15.Publication details: New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.Description: 1 online resource (xii, 242 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

0585000506
9780585000503
0511000790
9780511000799
9780521583442
0521583446

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Victorian renovations of the novel.DDC classification:

823/.809355 21

LOC classification:

PR871 .K44 1998eb

Other classification:

I561. 074

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

1. Narrative annexes: altered spaces, altered modes -- 2. Victorian critics, narrative annexes, and prescriptions for the novel -- 3. Norms and narrow spaces: the gendering of limits on representation -- 4. Narrative annexes, social mobility, and class anxiety -- 5. Older, deeper, further: narrative annexes and the extent of the Condition of England -- 6. Victorian annexes and modern form.

Summary: This study of narrative technique in Victorian novels introduces the concept of 'narrative annexes' whereby unexpected characters, impermissible subjects and plot-changing events are introduced within fictional worlds which otherwise exclude them. They are marked by the crossing of borders into previously unrepresented places and new genres or modes, challenging Victorian cultural and literary norms. Suzanne Keen's original readings of novels by Charlotte Bront�e, Dickens, Disraeli, Hardy, Kingsley, Trollope, and Wells show these writers negotiating the boundaries of representation to reveal in narrative annexes the subjects (notably sexuality and social class) which contemporary critics sought to exclude from the realm of the novel. Fears of disease, of working men, of Popery, of dark-skinned 'others', of the poor who toil and starve in close proximity to the rectories, homes, clubs and walled gardens of Victorian polite society draw readers down narrow alleys, through thorny hedges, across desolate heaths, into narrative annexes.

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-238) and index.

Print version record.

This study of narrative technique in Victorian novels introduces the concept of 'narrative annexes' whereby unexpected characters, impermissible subjects and plot-changing events are introduced within fictional worlds which otherwise exclude them. They are marked by the crossing of borders into previously unrepresented places and new genres or modes, challenging Victorian cultural and literary norms. Suzanne Keen's original readings of novels by Charlotte Bront�e, Dickens, Disraeli, Hardy, Kingsley, Trollope, and Wells show these writers negotiating the boundaries of representation to reveal in narrative annexes the subjects (notably sexuality and social class) which contemporary critics sought to exclude from the realm of the novel. Fears of disease, of working men, of Popery, of dark-skinned 'others', of the poor who toil and starve in close proximity to the rectories, homes, clubs and walled gardens of Victorian polite society draw readers down narrow alleys, through thorny hedges, across desolate heaths, into narrative annexes.

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