Still life : suspended development in the Victorian novel / Elisha Cohn.

• Still life: Suspended development in the Victorian novel' rethinks the nineteenth-century aesthetics of agency through the Victorian novel's fascination with states of reverie, trance, and sleep. These states challenge contemporary scientific and philosophical accounts of the perfectibility of the self, which privileged reflective self-awareness. In dialogue with the field of literature and science studies and affect studies, this book shows how Victorian writers used narrative form to respond to the analytical practices and knowledge production of those other disciplines. Drawing upon canonical texts-by Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy-Still Life contends that depictions of non-purposive perceptual experience suspend the processes of self-cultivation (Bildung) central to Victorian aesthetics, science, psychology, and political theory, as well as most critical accounts of the novel form. Departing from the values of individual cultivation and moral revelation associated with the genre, these writers offer an affective framework for understanding the subtly non-instrumental powers of narrative.0. 

Ämnesord

Litteraturvetenskap  (sao)

Drömmar i litteraturen  (sao)

Sömn i litteraturen  (sao)

Reflection (Philosophy) in literature.  (LCSH)

Dreams in literature.  (LCSH)

Sleep in literature.  (LCSH)

English fiction  -- 19th century -- History and criticism. (LCSH)

Dreams in literature.  (fast)

English fiction.  (fast)

Reflection (Philosophy) in literature.  (fast)

Sleep in literature.  (fast)

Dreams in literature  (LCSH)

Sleep in literature  (LCSH)

1800-talet  (sao)

1800-1899  (fast)

Genre

Criticism, interpretation, etc.  (fast)

Klassifikation

823.809 (DDC)