
The Powers of Distance
Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment
Amanda Anderson(Author)
Princeton University Press
Published on 19. August 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-691-07497-9 (ISBN)
Description
Combining analysis of Victorian literature and culture with forceful theoretical argument, The Powers of Distance examines the progressive potential of those forms of cultivated detachment associated with Enlightenment and modern thought. Amanda Anderson explores a range of practices in nineteenth-century British culture, including methods of objectivity in social science, practices of omniscience in artistic realism, and the complex forms of affiliation in Victorian cosmopolitanism. Anderson demonstrates that many writers--including George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Bronte, Matthew Arnold, and Oscar Wilde--thoughtfully address the challenging moral questions that attend stances of detachment. In so doing, she offers a revisionist account of Victorian culture and a tempered defense of detachment as an ongoing practice and aspiration. The Powers of Distance illuminates its historical object of study and provides a powerful example for its theoretical argument, showing that an ideal of critical detachment underlies the ironic modes of modernism and postmodernism as well as the tradition of Enlightenment thought and critical theory.
Its broad understanding of detachment and cultivated distance, together with its focused historical analysis, will appeal to theorists and critics across the humanities, particularly those working in literary and cultural studies, feminism, and postcolonialism. Original in scope and thesis, this book constitutes a major contribution to literary history and contemporary theory.
Its broad understanding of detachment and cultivated distance, together with its focused historical analysis, will appeal to theorists and critics across the humanities, particularly those working in literary and cultural studies, feminism, and postcolonialism. Original in scope and thesis, this book constitutes a major contribution to literary history and contemporary theory.
Reviews / Votes
"The Powers of Distance ... consistently delivers the double payoff of enriched views on both Victorian texts and contemporary debates."--Victorian StudiesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
346 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-07497-9 (9780691074979)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2018
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€45.99
Available for download
Person
Amanda Anderson is Professor of English at The Johns Hopkins University and the author of Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture.
Content
Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Forms of Detachment 3 Chapter One: Gender, Modernity, and Detachment Domestic Ideas and the Case of Charlotte Bronte's Villette 34 Chapter Two: Cosmopolitanism in Different Voices Charles Dicken's Little Dorrit and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion 63 Chapter Three: Disinterestedness as a Vocation Revisisting Matthew Arnold 91 Chapter Four: The Cultivation of Partiality George Eliot and the Jewish Question 119 Chapter Five: "Manners Before Morals" Oscar Wilde and Epigrammatic Detachment 147 Conclusion: The Character of Theory 177 Bibliography 181 Index 193