
Picturing Reform in Victorian Britain
Janice Carlisle(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 19. March 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
290 pages
978-1-107-47975-3 (ISBN)
Description
How did Victorians, as creators and viewers of images, visualize the politics of franchise reform? This study of Victorian art and parliamentary politics, specifically in the 1840s and 1860s, answers that question by viewing the First and Second Reform Acts from the perspectives offered by Ruskin's political theories of art and Bagehot's visual theory of politics. Combining subjects and approaches characteristic of art history, political history, literary criticism and cultural critique, Picturing Reform in Victorian Britain treats both paintings and wood engravings, particularly those published in Punch and the Illustrated London News. Carlisle analyzes unlikely pairings - a novel by Trollope and a painting by Hayter, an engraving after Leech and a high-society portrait by Landseer - to argue that such conjunctions marked both everyday life in Victorian Britain and the nature of its visual politics as it was manifested in the myriad heterogeneous and often incongruous images of illustrated journalism.
Reviews / Votes
'A long overdue translation of visual culture from the margins to the centre of discussion of reform.' The Times Higher Education Supplement 'Skilfully juxtaposing a wide range of sources, from frescoes to wood engravings, Janice Carlisle in her latest book demonstrates why and how Victorian visual culture could do 'political work'. [Her] close scrutiny of both images and texts allows her to trace surprising links between media ... Carlisle has spent many hours poring over the sources she discusses; her readings of them are rich and unexpected.' Jo Briggs, Victorian StudiesMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
34 Halftones, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
505 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-107-47975-3 (9781107479753)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Janice Carlisle
Picturing Reform in Victorian Britain
Book
05/2012
Cambridge University Press
€129.50
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Janice Carlisle
Picturing Reform in Victorian Britain
E-Book
05/2012
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€26.49
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Person
Janice Carlisle is Professor of English at Yale University and has published on a wide variety of Victorian subjects, including essays on the autobiographical novels of Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, as well as books on the ethical implications of Victorian fiction. More recently she has written on the culture of Britain in the 1860s, and has published Common Scents: Comparative Encounters in High-Victorian Fiction (2004), a book on the sensory registers of novels written at that time.
Content
Introduction; 1. Art as politics: lines in theory and practice; 2. Pictures on display; 3. Redrawing the franchise in the 1860s: lines around the Constitution; 4. Within the pale; Conclusion.