The Burdens of Perfection
On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Published on 29. May 2008
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-0-8014-4661-0 (ISBN)
Description
Literary criticism has, in recent decades, rather fled from discussions of moral psychology, and for good reasons, too. Who would not want to flee the hectoring moralism with which it is so easily associated-portentous, pious, humorless? But in protecting us from such fates, our flight has had its costs, as we have lost the concepts needed to recognize and assess much of what distinguished nineteenth-century British literature. That literature was inescapably ethical in orientation, and to proceed as if it were not ignores a large part of what these texts have to offer, and to that degree makes less reasonable the desire to study them, rather than other documents from the period, or from other periods.
Such are the intuitions that drive The Burdens of Perfection, a study of moral perfectionism in nineteenth-century British culture. Reading the period's essayists (Mill, Arnold, Carlyle), poets (Browning and Tennyson), and especially its novelists (Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and James), Andrew H. Miller provides an extensive response to Stanley Cavell's contribution to ethics and philosophy of mind. In the process, Miller offers a fresh way to perceive the Victorians and the lingering traces their quests for improvement have left on readers.
Such are the intuitions that drive The Burdens of Perfection, a study of moral perfectionism in nineteenth-century British culture. Reading the period's essayists (Mill, Arnold, Carlyle), poets (Browning and Tennyson), and especially its novelists (Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and James), Andrew H. Miller provides an extensive response to Stanley Cavell's contribution to ethics and philosophy of mind. In the process, Miller offers a fresh way to perceive the Victorians and the lingering traces their quests for improvement have left on readers.
Reviews / Votes
Andrew H. Miller makes the compelling, persuasive argument that the moral perfectionism so deeply embedded in nineteenth-century writing, particularly in Victorian fiction, represents not a position adopted by some writers and rejected by others but rather 'a field on which writers arrayed themselves.'.(Choice) One of the best books on Victorian writing to have appeared in the last ten years.
- Philip Davis (Victorian Studies)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Product notice
Paper over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8014-4661-0 (9780801446610)
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
Andrew H. Miller
The Burdens of Perfection
On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
E-Book
08/2011
Cornell University Press
€12.49
Available for download
Person
Andrew H. Miller is Professor of English and Director of the Victorian Studies Program at Indiana University and Editor of Victorian Studies. He is the author of Novels Behind Glass: Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative.
Content
Preface
Resisting, Conspiring, Completing: An Introduction
Improvement and Moral Perfectionism
Moral Perfectionism in the Winter of 1866-67
Historical Sources
Implicative and Conclusive Criticism
Part I. The Narrative of Improvement
1. Skepticism and Perfectionism I: Mechanization and Desire
Standing Before Camelot
Skepticism as Ungoverned Desire: Browning's Duke
Skepticism as Mechanization: Carlyle and Mill
Mr. Dombey Rides Death
2. Skepticism and Perfectionism II: Weakness of Will
Victorian Akrasia
Perspective and Commitment
Hard Times and Akrasia
Daniel Deronda and Second-Person Relations
Orchestrating Perspectives
Mark Tapley's Nausea
Interlude: Critical Free Indirect Discourse
3. Reading Thoughts: Casuistry and Transfiguration
Casuistry and the Novel
The Theater of Casuistry: Dramatic Monologues
Exemplary Criticism
Part II. The Moral Psychology of Improvement
4. Perfectly Helpless
The Reticulation of Constraint
Sigmund Freud and Richard Simpson
5. Responsiveness, Knowingness, and John Henry Newman
"An Evil Crust Is on Them"
The Violence of Our Denials
Watching and Imitation
Close Reading
6. The Knowledge of Shame
Skepticism and Shame
Three Scenes of Shame
Edith Dombey's Shame
Shame and Being Known
Shame and Great Expectations
Shame and Narration
7. On Lives Unled
Nailed to Ourselves
Environments for the Optative
The Jamesian Optative
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Resisting, Conspiring, Completing: An Introduction
Improvement and Moral Perfectionism
Moral Perfectionism in the Winter of 1866-67
Historical Sources
Implicative and Conclusive Criticism
Part I. The Narrative of Improvement
1. Skepticism and Perfectionism I: Mechanization and Desire
Standing Before Camelot
Skepticism as Ungoverned Desire: Browning's Duke
Skepticism as Mechanization: Carlyle and Mill
Mr. Dombey Rides Death
2. Skepticism and Perfectionism II: Weakness of Will
Victorian Akrasia
Perspective and Commitment
Hard Times and Akrasia
Daniel Deronda and Second-Person Relations
Orchestrating Perspectives
Mark Tapley's Nausea
Interlude: Critical Free Indirect Discourse
3. Reading Thoughts: Casuistry and Transfiguration
Casuistry and the Novel
The Theater of Casuistry: Dramatic Monologues
Exemplary Criticism
Part II. The Moral Psychology of Improvement
4. Perfectly Helpless
The Reticulation of Constraint
Sigmund Freud and Richard Simpson
5. Responsiveness, Knowingness, and John Henry Newman
"An Evil Crust Is on Them"
The Violence of Our Denials
Watching and Imitation
Close Reading
6. The Knowledge of Shame
Skepticism and Shame
Three Scenes of Shame
Edith Dombey's Shame
Shame and Being Known
Shame and Great Expectations
Shame and Narration
7. On Lives Unled
Nailed to Ourselves
Environments for the Optative
The Jamesian Optative
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index