
The Romantic Sublime and Middle-Class Subjectivity in the Victorian Novel
Stephen Hancock(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 16. August 2005
Book
Hardback
214 pages
978-0-415-97545-2 (ISBN)
Description
This study follows the aesthetic of the sublime from Burke and Kant, through Wordsworth and the Shelleys, into Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot and Hardy. Exploring the continuities between the romantic and Victorian "periods" that have so often been rather read as differences, the book demonstrate that the sublime mode enables the transition from a paradigm of overwhelming power exemplified by the body of the king to the pervasive power of surveillance utilized by the rising middle classes. While the domestic woman connected with the rise of the middle class is normally seen as beautiful, the book contends that the moral authority given to this icon of depth and interiority is actually sublime. The binary of the beautiful and the sublime seeks to contain the sublimity of womanhood by insisting on sublimity's masculine character. This is the book's most important claim: rather than exemplifying masculine strength, the sublime marks the transition to a system of power gendered as feminine and yet masks that transition because it fears the power it ostensibly accords to the feminine. This aesthetic is both an inheritance the Victorians receive from their romantic predecessors, and, more importantly, a broad historical phenomenon that questions the artificial boundaries between romantic and Victorian.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
1 s/w Abbildung
1 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
471 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-415-97545-2 (9780415975452)
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
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09/2014
1st Edition
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E-Book
10/2013
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Routledge
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E-Book
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1st Edition
Routledge
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Person
Stephen Hancock
Content
Chapter 1 Moral Authority and the Sublime, Stephen Hancock; Chapter 2 "That Huge Fermenting Mass", Stephen Hancock; Chapter 3 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Sublime Woman and the Divisible Sublime, Stephen Hancock; Chapter 4 The Sublime Woman and the Mature Middle-Class Man in Middlemarch, Stephen Hancock; Chapter 5 Fearing Their Bodies, Stephen Hancock; Chapter 6 How Little is Dorrit?, Stephen Hancock; Chapter 7 Married to a Job, Stephen Hancock;