David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the tonal shifts of the narrative voice in Vanity Fair as encoding a yearning for public scenes of performance. Moving between public speechifying and chastened intimate ...
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This chapter examines the tonal shifts of the narrative voice in Vanity Fair as encoding a yearning for public scenes of performance. Moving between public speechifying and chastened intimate address, the Thackerayan narrator offers readers an acoustic map of different imaginary scenes of reception. The pitch of Thackeray's voice—both its tone and its reach, its sound and the spaces it organizes—indexes various fantasmatic scenes of readerly witness, conveying in the process a vivid sense of the erosion of public space in the face of the exaltation of the domestic sphere. The sociohistorical imagination evident in Vanity Fair was given a new intensity of focus in his unperformed play The Wolves and the Lamb (1854) and the novel into which he later adapted it, the formally innovative Lovel the Widower (1860). In retreating from the stage, Thackeray both amplified his critique of mid-Victorian domesticity and pioneered the practice of interior monologue.Less
This chapter examines the tonal shifts of the narrative voice in Vanity Fair as encoding a yearning for public scenes of performance. Moving between public speechifying and chastened intimate address, the Thackerayan narrator offers readers an acoustic map of different imaginary scenes of reception. The pitch of Thackeray's voice—both its tone and its reach, its sound and the spaces it organizes—indexes various fantasmatic scenes of readerly witness, conveying in the process a vivid sense of the erosion of public space in the face of the exaltation of the domestic sphere. The sociohistorical imagination evident in Vanity Fair was given a new intensity of focus in his unperformed play The Wolves and the Lamb (1854) and the novel into which he later adapted it, the formally innovative Lovel the Widower (1860). In retreating from the stage, Thackeray both amplified his critique of mid-Victorian domesticity and pioneered the practice of interior monologue.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ...
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While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While ...
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This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While there had long been other works on manners—courtesy manuals, conduct books, etc.—the etiquette book differed from what came before because it made its case for of good form without offering the reader a stable ethical ideal. In the absence of shared social or cultural ends, the mistake emerges as an object that is at once reliable and disturbing. Then, in the context readings of eating peas with your knife in Thackeray and pointing at people in Balzac, the chapter develops a psychoanalytically inflected theory of the social mistake both in general and in relation to the particular form of the nineteenth-century novel.Less
This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While there had long been other works on manners—courtesy manuals, conduct books, etc.—the etiquette book differed from what came before because it made its case for of good form without offering the reader a stable ethical ideal. In the absence of shared social or cultural ends, the mistake emerges as an object that is at once reliable and disturbing. Then, in the context readings of eating peas with your knife in Thackeray and pointing at people in Balzac, the chapter develops a psychoanalytically inflected theory of the social mistake both in general and in relation to the particular form of the nineteenth-century novel.
David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book considers the contribution of writers' theatrical ambitions to their invention of what by many accounts are among ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book considers the contribution of writers' theatrical ambitions to their invention of what by many accounts are among the most “novelistic,” and thus reputedly individualizing, of novels. It demonstrates that the novel's interior spaces are lined with longing references to the public worlds they would seem to have left behind. The book considers four would-be playwrights noted for their antitheatricality. From William Makepeace Thackeray's hatred of pretense and George Eliot's suspicion of vain women to Henry James's early diagnoses of the culture of publicity and James Joyce's contempt for Buck Mulligan's performative flourishes, these writers are capable of rhetorically employing “theater” as a synonym for everything they most despise.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book considers the contribution of writers' theatrical ambitions to their invention of what by many accounts are among the most “novelistic,” and thus reputedly individualizing, of novels. It demonstrates that the novel's interior spaces are lined with longing references to the public worlds they would seem to have left behind. The book considers four would-be playwrights noted for their antitheatricality. From William Makepeace Thackeray's hatred of pretense and George Eliot's suspicion of vain women to Henry James's early diagnoses of the culture of publicity and James Joyce's contempt for Buck Mulligan's performative flourishes, these writers are capable of rhetorically employing “theater” as a synonym for everything they most despise.
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804784207
- eISBN:
- 9780804784870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804784207.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the works of William Makepeace Thackeray and Preston Sturges, two artists who share a penchant for thematizing the subject of scandal (and, by extension, the subject of ...
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This chapter examines the works of William Makepeace Thackeray and Preston Sturges, two artists who share a penchant for thematizing the subject of scandal (and, by extension, the subject of censorship) throughout the course of their storytelling. Focusing on their most scandal-ridden texts, Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) and Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941), it discusses the ways in which the authors harness the perverse powers of the logic of scandal to their own artistic advantage. By repeatedly pointing out to their audiences all the things that they, in the name of propriety, should not and will not say, Thackeray and Sturges are simultaneously able to condemn, ridicule, and appease the more squeamish and conservative members of those audiences. Throughout their respective works, words and images are played off one another in a well-orchestrated juggling act that allows the artists to show us that which they “cannot” tell us, and that which they “cannot” show.Less
This chapter examines the works of William Makepeace Thackeray and Preston Sturges, two artists who share a penchant for thematizing the subject of scandal (and, by extension, the subject of censorship) throughout the course of their storytelling. Focusing on their most scandal-ridden texts, Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) and Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941), it discusses the ways in which the authors harness the perverse powers of the logic of scandal to their own artistic advantage. By repeatedly pointing out to their audiences all the things that they, in the name of propriety, should not and will not say, Thackeray and Sturges are simultaneously able to condemn, ridicule, and appease the more squeamish and conservative members of those audiences. Throughout their respective works, words and images are played off one another in a well-orchestrated juggling act that allows the artists to show us that which they “cannot” tell us, and that which they “cannot” show.
David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development ...
More
According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly—the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin—writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies—this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, the book reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, the book shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. The book establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority by investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers. In the process, it illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, this book provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.Less
According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly—the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin—writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies—this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, the book reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, the book shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. The book establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority by investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers. In the process, it illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, this book provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.
Jami Bartlett
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226369655
- eISBN:
- 9780226369792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226369792.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter argues that Thackeray devises a physical approach to reference in the world of the realist novel, and develops a theory of demonstrative identification that is nothing less than a ...
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This chapter argues that Thackeray devises a physical approach to reference in the world of the realist novel, and develops a theory of demonstrative identification that is nothing less than a motor-intentional philosophy of language. His novel Barry Lyndon is obsessed with lost objects, and with what one has in the losing of them. This chapter also shows how Thackeray uses the act of throwing objects as a bidirectional referential strategy, a tracking behavior that gets rid of an object in order to take meaning away from it. Barry’s frame of reference is constituted by these thrown objects: as they fly into the world, their trajectories allow its possibilities and restrictions to emerge. Because there are no intentional terminations in this novel—throwing isn’t a throwing-away—Barry’s attempts to reference, pick out, and hold on to the objects that ambiguously signify his narrative desire create arcs of beginning and ending that generate narrative through their attention to the physical distance between objects, characters, and plots.Less
This chapter argues that Thackeray devises a physical approach to reference in the world of the realist novel, and develops a theory of demonstrative identification that is nothing less than a motor-intentional philosophy of language. His novel Barry Lyndon is obsessed with lost objects, and with what one has in the losing of them. This chapter also shows how Thackeray uses the act of throwing objects as a bidirectional referential strategy, a tracking behavior that gets rid of an object in order to take meaning away from it. Barry’s frame of reference is constituted by these thrown objects: as they fly into the world, their trajectories allow its possibilities and restrictions to emerge. Because there are no intentional terminations in this novel—throwing isn’t a throwing-away—Barry’s attempts to reference, pick out, and hold on to the objects that ambiguously signify his narrative desire create arcs of beginning and ending that generate narrative through their attention to the physical distance between objects, characters, and plots.
Patrick Parrinder
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199264858
- eISBN:
- 9780191698989
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199264858.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The chapter begins with a summary of the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and how he started writing novels. During his time, he wrote Vanity Fair, based in London, which was the centre of the ...
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The chapter begins with a summary of the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and how he started writing novels. During his time, he wrote Vanity Fair, based in London, which was the centre of the global economy and part of a large empire. The chapter also discusses in detail other novels written inthe Victorian and Edwardian periods. Insights about xenophobia are also contemplated through an analysis of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and George Eliot's Deronda. A contrast of ideas can be spotted from the analysis: The Way We Live focuses on showing how the English nation degenerates at the hand of the foreigners. To show a contrast, the Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad is also elaborated in the chapter. Its dramatis personae are non-English characters.Less
The chapter begins with a summary of the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and how he started writing novels. During his time, he wrote Vanity Fair, based in London, which was the centre of the global economy and part of a large empire. The chapter also discusses in detail other novels written inthe Victorian and Edwardian periods. Insights about xenophobia are also contemplated through an analysis of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and George Eliot's Deronda. A contrast of ideas can be spotted from the analysis: The Way We Live focuses on showing how the English nation degenerates at the hand of the foreigners. To show a contrast, the Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad is also elaborated in the chapter. Its dramatis personae are non-English characters.
Leonée Ormond
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236740
- eISBN:
- 9781846314285
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853236740.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the great novelists of the Victorian period and a natural connoisseur of the fine arts. He introduced his knowledge of the fine arts into his novels, cognizant ...
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William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the great novelists of the Victorian period and a natural connoisseur of the fine arts. He introduced his knowledge of the fine arts into his novels, cognizant of the fact that certain painterly techniques could be translated directly into fiction. Thackeray was an absolute pre-Aesthetic writer who played a role in stimulating the Queen Anne revival, one of the most important movements in aesthetic taste. He made a number of copies of paintings by the Old Masters such as Titian, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Terborch. Most of Thackeray's fictional references to the Old Masters can be found in The Newcomes, which he began publishing in 1853. In 1840, Thackeray was very impressed by Raphael's drawings which he saw in an exhibition, an experience that probably conditioned Clive Newcome's comment about works on ‘gray paper’.Less
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the great novelists of the Victorian period and a natural connoisseur of the fine arts. He introduced his knowledge of the fine arts into his novels, cognizant of the fact that certain painterly techniques could be translated directly into fiction. Thackeray was an absolute pre-Aesthetic writer who played a role in stimulating the Queen Anne revival, one of the most important movements in aesthetic taste. He made a number of copies of paintings by the Old Masters such as Titian, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Terborch. Most of Thackeray's fictional references to the Old Masters can be found in The Newcomes, which he began publishing in 1853. In 1840, Thackeray was very impressed by Raphael's drawings which he saw in an exhibition, an experience that probably conditioned Clive Newcome's comment about works on ‘gray paper’.
Gowan Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226332734
- eISBN:
- 9780226332871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226332871.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated ...
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This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated reconstructions of prehistoric creatures from just fragmentary parts were published sequentially in serial form, and rendered considerably more remarkable and compelling by the suspense and anticipation involved. Owen, at the same time, was particularly enthralled by the dynamics of serial fiction and his literary reading practices shed important light on his Cuvierian paleontological procedures. This connection between correlation and serialization was one that was also recognized by many of the leading serial novelists of the period including William Makepeace Thackeray and Henry James, who adopted metaphors from paleontology to describe their own authorial practices.Less
This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated reconstructions of prehistoric creatures from just fragmentary parts were published sequentially in serial form, and rendered considerably more remarkable and compelling by the suspense and anticipation involved. Owen, at the same time, was particularly enthralled by the dynamics of serial fiction and his literary reading practices shed important light on his Cuvierian paleontological procedures. This connection between correlation and serialization was one that was also recognized by many of the leading serial novelists of the period including William Makepeace Thackeray and Henry James, who adopted metaphors from paleontology to describe their own authorial practices.
Rosemary Ashton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300227260
- eISBN:
- 9780300231199
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300227260.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter details events that occurred after the summer of 1858. Among these is the fallout from the petty quarrel between Thackeray and Yates at the Garrick Club. In the fall of 1858, it was ...
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This chapter details events that occurred after the summer of 1858. Among these is the fallout from the petty quarrel between Thackeray and Yates at the Garrick Club. In the fall of 1858, it was announced in the press that Yates would bring a court case against the Garrick. On 17 November, the Morning Post obliged its readers by going over the whole affair, quoting from Yates' offending Town Talk article, from Thackeray's letter to Yates and the latter's reply, from both men's appeals to the committee of the Garrick, and from the committee's demand that Yates apologise to Thackeray. The remainder of the chapter covers Dickens's success and embarrassment, the end of the Robinson divorce case, and the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species.Less
This chapter details events that occurred after the summer of 1858. Among these is the fallout from the petty quarrel between Thackeray and Yates at the Garrick Club. In the fall of 1858, it was announced in the press that Yates would bring a court case against the Garrick. On 17 November, the Morning Post obliged its readers by going over the whole affair, quoting from Yates' offending Town Talk article, from Thackeray's letter to Yates and the latter's reply, from both men's appeals to the committee of the Garrick, and from the committee's demand that Yates apologise to Thackeray. The remainder of the chapter covers Dickens's success and embarrassment, the end of the Robinson divorce case, and the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species.
Rosemary Ashton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300227260
- eISBN:
- 9780300231199
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300227260.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter details events that occurred in London between July and August 1858. These include the absurdly magnified rift in the Garrick Club caused by the callow Edmund Yates's casually malicious ...
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This chapter details events that occurred in London between July and August 1858. These include the absurdly magnified rift in the Garrick Club caused by the callow Edmund Yates's casually malicious article on Thackeray. The main event in this saga occurred on 10 July, when the Garrick held a special meeting of its members to decide what to do about Yates. After much ado about not very much during the summer, the chief result was ‘the temporary estrangement of Mr Thackeray and Mr Dickens’. The remainder of the chapter describes Dickens's reading tour; the exploits of Dickens's minor character in A Tale of Two Cities, Mr Stryver; the continued press coverage of the Great Stink; and Disraeli's whitebait dinner.Less
This chapter details events that occurred in London between July and August 1858. These include the absurdly magnified rift in the Garrick Club caused by the callow Edmund Yates's casually malicious article on Thackeray. The main event in this saga occurred on 10 July, when the Garrick held a special meeting of its members to decide what to do about Yates. After much ado about not very much during the summer, the chief result was ‘the temporary estrangement of Mr Thackeray and Mr Dickens’. The remainder of the chapter describes Dickens's reading tour; the exploits of Dickens's minor character in A Tale of Two Cities, Mr Stryver; the continued press coverage of the Great Stink; and Disraeli's whitebait dinner.
Rosemary Ashton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300227260
- eISBN:
- 9780300231199
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300227260.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter details events that occurred in London in the summer of 858. These include the rift between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, which can be partially attributed to ...
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This chapter details events that occurred in London in the summer of 858. These include the rift between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, which can be partially attributed to Dickens's much publicized separation from his wife and Thackeray's role in spreading rumours about the former's marriage troubles; and Benjamin Disraeli's political success stemming from his role in guiding the India Bill to completion, his widely acclaimed budget, and his swift management of the bill to clean up the Thames. The chapter also describes the Divorce Act, which was being tested in suits brought before the new Divorce Court during the spring and early summer of 1858. By the end of the year, 244 cases had been heard, and the general opinion was that the new law was a roaring success.Less
This chapter details events that occurred in London in the summer of 858. These include the rift between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, which can be partially attributed to Dickens's much publicized separation from his wife and Thackeray's role in spreading rumours about the former's marriage troubles; and Benjamin Disraeli's political success stemming from his role in guiding the India Bill to completion, his widely acclaimed budget, and his swift management of the bill to clean up the Thames. The chapter also describes the Divorce Act, which was being tested in suits brought before the new Divorce Court during the spring and early summer of 1858. By the end of the year, 244 cases had been heard, and the general opinion was that the new law was a roaring success.
Kaplan Cora
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199560615
- eISBN:
- 9780191803499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199560615.003.0031
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines representations of gender in the nineteenth century British novel. Nineteenth-century novels provided moralized narratives of gendered subjects and their relationships, and were ...
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This chapter examines representations of gender in the nineteenth century British novel. Nineteenth-century novels provided moralized narratives of gendered subjects and their relationships, and were a privileged space where ‘restlessness’ and ‘discontent’ were voiced. Novels also became the favoured site where impossible fantasies of identification and desire were regularly enacted. Realism and fantasy were always intertwined and interdependent in the representation of gender. However, as fiction began to favour greater psychological and social realism, the more central to the novel the register of gender in fantasy became. Novels such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846–8), and Thackeray's Vanity Fair raised more questions than they could answer about what was ‘customary’ and what was right in the making of gendered subjects.Less
This chapter examines representations of gender in the nineteenth century British novel. Nineteenth-century novels provided moralized narratives of gendered subjects and their relationships, and were a privileged space where ‘restlessness’ and ‘discontent’ were voiced. Novels also became the favoured site where impossible fantasies of identification and desire were regularly enacted. Realism and fantasy were always intertwined and interdependent in the representation of gender. However, as fiction began to favour greater psychological and social realism, the more central to the novel the register of gender in fantasy became. Novels such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846–8), and Thackeray's Vanity Fair raised more questions than they could answer about what was ‘customary’ and what was right in the making of gendered subjects.
Kate McQuiston
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199767656
- eISBN:
- 9780199369492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199767656.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, Western
Chapter 4 explores numerous steps and facets in Kubrick’s working process regarding music in Barry Lyndon, with special attention to the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, op. ...
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Chapter 4 explores numerous steps and facets in Kubrick’s working process regarding music in Barry Lyndon, with special attention to the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, op. 100, a work which Kubrick’s producer Jan Harlan recomposed and had re-recorded for the film. Schubert’s piece is also considered with relation to its status as a late-style work, a tack that views late style as both an articulation of the composer’s cognizance of mortality and an answer to it. This strategy emphasizes the role of Schubert’s music in the estrangement and ultimate destruction of the central characters.Less
Chapter 4 explores numerous steps and facets in Kubrick’s working process regarding music in Barry Lyndon, with special attention to the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, op. 100, a work which Kubrick’s producer Jan Harlan recomposed and had re-recorded for the film. Schubert’s piece is also considered with relation to its status as a late-style work, a tack that views late style as both an articulation of the composer’s cognizance of mortality and an answer to it. This strategy emphasizes the role of Schubert’s music in the estrangement and ultimate destruction of the central characters.
Clive Brown
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300095395
- eISBN:
- 9780300127867
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300095395.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl ...
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As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, his pupil was “good and pretty, lively and obedient.” In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn's portraits failed to convey the mercurial traits that often made his features fascinating and arresting. One of his closest English musical friends, William Sterndale Bennett, described Mendelssohn as having the appearance of an angel. William Makepeace Thackeray commented that “his face is the most beautiful face I ever saw...” whereas Richard Wagner claimed that he looked so fat and unpleasant. As he grew older, Mendelssohn apparently did not lose any of his physical attractiveness. Many noted the contrast between his slight build and his athleticism. Others, like George Grove and Bayard Taylor, admired his eyes. In the last few years of his life, however, Mendelssohn's features and bearing showed signs of strain.Less
As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, his pupil was “good and pretty, lively and obedient.” In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn's portraits failed to convey the mercurial traits that often made his features fascinating and arresting. One of his closest English musical friends, William Sterndale Bennett, described Mendelssohn as having the appearance of an angel. William Makepeace Thackeray commented that “his face is the most beautiful face I ever saw...” whereas Richard Wagner claimed that he looked so fat and unpleasant. As he grew older, Mendelssohn apparently did not lose any of his physical attractiveness. Many noted the contrast between his slight build and his athleticism. Others, like George Grove and Bayard Taylor, admired his eyes. In the last few years of his life, however, Mendelssohn's features and bearing showed signs of strain.
