Download or read book Secrecy and Disclosure in Victorian Fiction written by Leila Silvana May and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were the Victorians more fascinated with secrecy than people of other periods? What is the function of secrets in Victorian fiction and in the society depicted, how does it differ from that of other periods, and how did readers of Victorian fiction respond to the secrecy they encountered? These are some of the questions Leila May poses in her study of the dynamics of secrecy and disclosure in fiction from Queen Victoria's coronation to the century's end. May argues that the works of writers such as Charlotte Brontë, William Makepeace Thackeray, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Arthur Conan Doyle reflect a distinctly Victorian obsession with the veiling and unveiling of information. She argues that there are two opposing vectors in Victorian culture concerning secrecy and subjectivity, one presupposing a form of radical Cartesian selfhood always remaining a secret to other selves and another showing that nothing can be hidden from the trained eye. (May calls the relation between these clashing tendencies the "dialectics" of secrecy and disclosure.) May's theories of secrecy and disclosure are informed by the work of twentieth-century social scientists. She emphasizes Georg Simmel's thesis that sociality and subjectivity are impossible without secrecy and Erving Goffman's claim that sociality can be understood in terms of performativity, "the presentation of the self in everyday life," and his revelation that performance always involves disguise, hence secrecy. May's study offers convincing evidence that secrecy and duplicity, in contrast to the Victorian period's emphasis on honesty and earnestness, emerged in response to the social pressures of class, gender, monarchy, and empire, and were key factors in producing both the subjectivity and the sociality that we now recognize as Victorian.

Download or read book Victorian Secrecy written by Albert D. Pionke and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian Secrecy explores the myriad ways in which knowledge was both zealously accumulated and jealously guarded by individuals, institutions, and government entities in Victorian Britain. Offering a wide variety of approaches, this interdisciplinary collection provides a richly textured account of what was at stake individually, aesthetically, and culturally in the Victorians' clandestine activities.

Download or read book Secrecy and Community in 21st Century Fiction written by María J. López and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction examines the relation between secrecy and community in a diverse and international range of contemporary fictional works in English. In its concern with what is called 'communities of secrecy', it is fundamentally indebted to the thought of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, who have pointed to the fallacies and dangers of identitarian and exclusionary communities, arguing for forms of being-in-common characterized by non-belonging, singularity and otherness. Also drawing on the work of J. Hillis Miller, Derek Attridge, Nicholas Royle, Matei Calinescu, Frank Kermode and George Simmel, among others, this volume analyses the centrality of secrets in the construction of literary form, narrative sequence and meaning, together with their foundational role in our private and interpersonal lives and the public and political realms. In doing so, it engages with the Derridean ethico-political value of secrecy and Derrida's conception of literature as the exemplary site for the operation of the unconditional secret.

Download or read book Reading Victorian Literature written by Wolfreys Julian Wolfreys and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Festschrift honouring J. Hillis Miller and his contribution to Victorian Studies and nineteenth-century criticismProvides stheoretically informed critical essays on nineteenth-century and Victorian literature, by major internationally recognized scholarsChapters provide detailed close readings of the work of J Hillis Miller, Thomas Hardy, Walter Pater, William Michael Rossetti, George Gissing, Charles Dickens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and Joseph ConradShowcases a major new essay by J Hillis Miller, as well as a previously unpublished interview with MillerReading Victorian Literature provides a critical commentary on major authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from Dickens to Conrad. At the same time, the assembled group of internationally recognised scholars engages with Miller's work, influence and significance in the study of that era. The volume includes original work by Miller and interviews with him.

Download or read book Personation Plots written by Clayton Carlyle Tarr and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length study of identity fraud in literature, Personation Plots argues that concerns about identity and the body gripped the Victorian consciousness. The mid-nineteenth century was marked by extensive medico-legal efforts to understand the body as the sole signifier of identity. The sensation genre, which enjoyed remarkable popularity in the 1860s and 1870s, at once reflected and challenged this discourse. In their frequent representations of identity fraud, sensation writers demonstrated that the body could never guarantee a person's identity. The body is malleable and untrustworthy, and the identity it is supposed to signify is governed by the caprices of the human mind and the growing authority of paper matter. Both a wide-ranging literary analysis and a portrait of the age, Personation Plots reads canonical texts by Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Charles Dickens alongside several lesser-known sensation novels. The study, which anticipates debates over biometric identification practices in our own time, also features brief criminal biographies of two of the nineteenth century's greatest impostors, Alice Grey and Mary Jane Furneaux, and concludes with an afterword on imposture in the late-Victorian Gothic.

Download or read book Surveillance and the Vanishing Individual written by Juan D. Lindau and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-12-19 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveillance and the Vanishing Individual is an investigation into the impact of the spread of digital technologies and practices, and especially the wide-spread practice of mass surveillance, on privacy and personhood. The book argues that the quest for prediction, certainty, and control lying at the heart of the state’s security apparatus destroys an essential component of human dignity and fundamentally undermines liberalism. The book begins with a discussion of the rise of the digital age and the historical import of this development. Subsequent chapters of the book examine different cultural understandings of privacy, the philosophical discussion of its centrality to human existence, and the form and extent of its legal protection. Lindau explores the reasons behind the rise of mass state surveillance, the modest legal restraints governing its use, and its deployment against activists, protestors, and dissidents and its impact on individuals and on privacy. The book then turns to a discussion of the rise of “surveillance capitalism” and, because this is not just—or even primarily—a U.S. phenomenon, examines the political, social, and other impacts of social media around the world. The book includes a case study discussing the global use of surveillance during the Covid-19 pandemic and the implications of this development before concluding with reflections on the relationship between mass surveillance and liberalism. The book will appeal equally to readers across the social sciences and philosophy, and to students in courses on privacy, surveillance, and democracy. Lindau expertly explores the social, political, and economic consequences of digitization and one of its essential features – the appropriation and “mining” of ever large troves of personal information. The book primarily focuses on the experience of the United States but includes a comparative cross-national and cross-regional analysis and a discussion of the link between different regime types and state surveillance.

Download or read book The Critical Reception of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle written by Laurence W. Mazzeno and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and also attending to the wide range of his published work. Twenty-first-century readers, television viewers, and moviegoers know Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most recognizable fictional detective. Holmes's enduring popularity has kept Conan Doyle in the public eye. However, Holmes has taken on a life of his own, generating a steady stream of critical commentary, while Conan Doyle's other works are slighted or ignored. Yet the Holmes stories make up only a small portion of Conan Doyle's published work, which includes mainstream and historical fiction; history; drama; medical, spiritualist, and political tracts; and even essays on photography. When Doyle published - whatever the subject - his contemporaries took note. Yet, outside of the fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, until recently relatively little has been done to analyze the reception Conan Doyle's work received during his lifetime and since his death. This book examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their many adaptations for print, visual, and online media, but attending to his other contributions to turn-of-the-twentieth-century culture as well. The availability of periodicals and newspapers online makes it possible to develop an assessment of Conan Doyle's (and Sherlock Holmes's) reputation among a wider readership and viewership, thus allowing for development of a broader and more accurate portrait of Doyle's place in literary and cultural history.

Download or read book Lady Audley s Secret written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-11-13 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Sir Michael Audley celebrates his marriage to Lucy Graham, his nephew, the barrister Robert Audley, welcomes his old friend George Talboys back to England, after three years of gold prospecting in Australia. George finds out that his wife Helen has died and that his son is under the care of his father in law. After settling the matter of the boy's guardianship, the Robert and Geroge set off to visit Sir Michael. While at the country manor Audley Court, Lady Audley avoids meeting George, and when the two seek an audience with the new Lady Audley, she makes many excuses to avoid their visit. Shortly thereafter, George disappears during a visit to Audley Court, much to Robert's consternation. Unwilling to believe that George has simply left suddenly and without notice, Robert begins to look into the circumstances around George's strange disappearance. His notes indicate the involvement of Lady Audley, much to his chagrin, and he slowly begins to collect evidence against her.

Download or read book Victorian Secrecy written by Denise Tischler Millstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether commercial, personal, political, professional, or spiritual, knowledge was capital for the Victorians in their ongoing project of constructing a modern information-based society. Victorian Secrecy explores the myriad ways in which knowledge was both zealously accumulated and jealously guarded by individuals, institutions, and government entities in Victorian Britain. Offering a wide variety of critical approaches and disciplinary perspectives, the contributors examine secretive actors with respect to a broad range of subjects, including the narrator in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, John Henry Newman's autobiographical novel Loss and Gain, Richard Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, modes of detection in Bleak House, the secret history of Harriet Martineau's role in the repeal of the Corn Law, and Victorian stage magicians. Taken together, the essays provide a richly textured account of which modes of hiding and revealing articulate secrets in Victorian literature and culture; how social relations are formed and reformed in relationship to secrecy; and what was at stake individually, aesthetically, and culturally in the Victorians' clandestine activities.

Download or read book Espionage in British Fiction and Film since 1900 written by Oliver Buckton and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Espionage in British Fiction and Film Since 1900 traces the history and development of the British spy novel from its emergence in the early twentieth century, through its growth as a popular genre during the Cold War, to its resurgence in the early twenty-first century. Using an innovative structure, the chapters focus on specific categories of fictional spying (such as the accidental spy or the professional) and identify each type with a vital period in the evolution of the spy novel and film. A central section of the book considers how, with the creation of James Bond by Ian Fleming in the 1950s, the professional spy was launched on a new career of global popularity, enhanced by the Bond film franchise. In the realm of fiction, a glance at the fiction bestseller list will reveal the continuing appeal of novelists such as John le Carré, Frederick Forsyth, Charles Cumming, Stella Rimington, Daniel Silva, Alec Berenson, Christopher Reich—to name but a few—and illustrates the continued fascination with the spy novel into the twenty-first century, decades after the end of the Cold War. There is also a burgeoning critical interest in spy fiction, with a number of new studies appearing in recent years. A genre that many believed would falter and disappear after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire has shown, if anything, increased signs of vitality. While exploring the origins of the British spy, tracing it through cultural and historical events, Espionage in British Fiction and Film Since 1900 also keeps in focus the essential role of the “changing enemy”—the chief adversary of and threat to Britain and its allies—in the evolution of spy fiction and cinema. The book concludes by analyzing examples of the enduring vitality of the British spy novel and film in the decades since the end of the Cold War.

Download or read book Lady Audley s Secret Volume 3 written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the classic Victorian-era novel that captivated readers in the 19th century and continues to entertain today. Follow the intrigue and mystery as Lady Audley tries to keep her dark secrets hidden from society. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Lady Audley s Secret Mystery Classic written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Sir Michael Audley celebrates his marriage to Lucy Graham, his nephew, the barrister Robert Audley, welcomes his old friend George Talboys back to England, after three years of gold prospecting in Australia. George finds out that his wife Helen has died and that his son is under the care of his father in law. After settling the matter of the boy's guardianship, the Robert and Geroge set off to visit Sir Michael. While at the country manor Audley Court, Lady Audley avoids meeting George, and when the two seek an audience with the new Lady Audley, she makes many excuses to avoid their visit. Shortly thereafter, George disappears during a visit to Audley Court, much to Robert's consternation. Unwilling to believe that George has simply left suddenly and without notice, Robert begins to look into the circumstances around George's strange disappearance. His notes indicate the involvement of Lady Audley, much to his chagrin, and he slowly begins to collect evidence against her.

Download or read book A Life s Secret written by Henry Mrs. Wood and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-04 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Life's Secret" (A Novel) by Henry Mrs. Wood. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible written by Susanne Scholz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible brings together 37 essential essays written by leading international scholars, examining crucial points of analysis within the field of feminist Hebrew Bible studies. Organized into four major areas - globalization, neoliberalism, media, and intersectionality - the essays collectively provide vibrant, relevant, and innovative contributions to the field. The topics of analysis focus heavily on gender and queer identity, with essays touching on African, Korean, and European feminist hermeneutics, womanist and interreligious readings, ecofeminist and animal biblical studies, migration biblical studies, the role of gender binary voices in evangelical-egalitarian approaches, and the examination of scripture in light of trans women's voices. The volume also includes essays examining the Old Testament as recited in music, literature, film, and video games. The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible charts a culturally, hermeneutically, and exegetically cutting-edge path for the ongoing development of biblical studies grounded in feminist, womanist, gender, and queer perspectives.

Download or read book Latino Dreams written by Paul Allatson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A welcome addition to the fields of Latino and (trans-)American cultural and literary studies, Latino Dreams focuses on a selection of Latino narratives, published between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, that may be said to traffic in the U.S.A.’s attendant myths and governing cultural logics. The selection includes novels by authors who have received little academic attention—Abraham Rodriguez, Achy Obejas, and Benjamin Alire Sáenz—along with underattended texts from more renowned writers—Rosario Ferré, Coco Fusco, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Latino Dreams takes a transcultural approach in order to raise questions of subaltern subordination and domination, and the resistant capacities of cultural production. The analysis explores how the selected narratives deploy specific narrative tactics, and a range of literary and other cultural capital, in order to question and reform the U.S.A.’s imaginary coordinates. In these texts, moreover, national imperatives are complicated by recourse to feminist, queer, panethnic, postcolonial, or transnational agendas. Yet the analysis also recognizes instances in which the counter-narrative will is frustrated: the narratives may provide signs of the U.S.A.’s hegemonic resilience in the face of imaginary disavowal.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel written by Deirdre David and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Victorian period, the British novel reached a wide readership and played a major role in the shaping of national and individual identity. As we come to understand the ways the novel contributed to public opinion on religion, gender, sexuality and race, we continue to be entertained and enlightened by the works of Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope and many others. This second edition of the Companion to the Victorian Novel has been updated fully, taking account of new research and critical methodologies. There are four new chapters and the others have been thoroughly updated, as has the guide to further reading. Designed to appeal to students, teachers and readers, these essays reflect the latest approaches to reading and understanding Victorian fiction.

Download or read book Victorian Sustainability in Literature and Culture written by Wendy Parkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a growing awareness of the depletion of energy resources and the perils of environmental degradation to the founding of self-sufficient communities and the establishment of the National Trust, the concept of sustainability began to take on a new importance in the Victorian period. An emerging sense of the fragility and instability of human and natural resources, and the deeply complex interweaving of the two, led many Victorians to consider how to preserve or protect what they valued, and how individuals, communities (or even nations) could survive and flourish in a world of finite resources. This collection explores not only nascent understandings of sustainability in ecological or environmental contexts but also encompasses consideration of the problem of psychological sustainability and emotional wellbeing in response to the upheavals of modernity. With chapters by scholars working in literary studies, history, cultural studies, and sustainability studies, the volume encompasses a wide diversity of topics, objects, and authors ranging from the 1850s to the early twentieth century. Victorian Sustainability offers new perspectives on debates about sustainability in the present by showing how our current concerns derive from an earlier historical context.