Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Victorian'
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1
Shiller, Dana Joy. "Neo-Victorian fiction : Reinventing the Victorians /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9346.
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Francis, Michael Barrie. "Victorian values and the Victorian theatre." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/59427/.
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I contend that 'morality, respectability, and decorum', were Victorian values trumpeted particularly loudly in Birmingham because of the local dominance of Nonconformism. Nonconformists had materially delayed the granting of a licence to Birmingham's playhouse, and continued actively hostile to its existence. Their influence on the prevailing 'official' moral climate is apparent in the reluctance of the local magistracy to grant music hall licence applications. Theatre managers here, then, laboured under an added imperative to maintain tranquil, well-conducted houses, presenting wholesome fare, and with strong community links. II My contention is that the theatre embraced and, occasionally, stimulated technological innovation. I also argue that Birmingham industrialists played a crucial role in materially changing both the functioning and the appearance of playhouses and music halls. That the revolution in mobility was the overriding factor in the contemporary mushrooming of playhouses and music halls is, I suggest, too apparent to be gainsaid. I focus closely on the transformation of Birmingham's transport links, both externally and within the town, and the readiness of local promoters and managers of theatres to exploit the new opportunities to attract audiences. III I suggest that if cultural imperialism operated more subtly than the political brand, imperialism it remained. The relationship with the fledgling United States displayed the classic characteristics of paternalism and condescension, not unmixed with arrogance, on . the part of the metropolitan power, and a general deference, giving way to fits of resentment, pique, and sometimes open rebellion, on the part of the erstwhile colonials. Minstrelsy and the cult of the 'Wild West' represent the beginnings of a reversal of the hitherto one-way cultural traffic, mirroring changes in the transatlantic political balance. I argue that the advent of steam navigation was a key factor in the expanding and vibrant Anglo-American exchange, with Birmingham playing a full role in that exchange.
3
Prince, John S. "Utopia Victoriana : the utopian novel in late Victorian Britain, 1871-1905." Virtual Press, 2003. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1259302.
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This study focuses on three significant issues addressed by utopian literature of the late Victorian period: the class struggle and the resulting debate about capitalism and socialism, the nature and significance of language, and the influence of Darwin's theory of evolution on attitudes toward human existence. The utopian reaction to each of these three issues reflects the increasingly scientific investigation and analysis of specialized fields of knowledge that developed throughout the nineteenth century. Within the context of major scientific advancements in biology, geology, linguistics, and technology, utopian literature of the late-Victorian period, c. 1871-1905, responds primarily to two opposing nineteenth-century attitudes, the complacent optimism of laissez-faire individualism and the resigned pessimism of naturalistic determinism. Literary utopianism of the late nineteenth century is an attempt to resolve the philosophical and epistemological conflict between the impersonal and seemingly unalterable natural laws of science and the indomitable human will. I contend that the utopian novel re-emerges in the last third of the nineteenth century at the intersection of scientific discourse and literary discourse. I further argue that the late Victorian utopia marks a critical transition between the classic utopia the modern utopia.Department of English
4
Dunn, Christine. "Victorian organ /." Online version of thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1850/7901.
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Finnigan, Marguerite C. "On value : Victorian political economy and the Victorian novel /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9405.
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Donner, Henriette T. "The thinning ranks : Neo-Victorians and the Victorian intellectual tradition, 1860-1980." Thesis, University of Leicester, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/35546.
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There can be no doubt that Ms Donner has set herself a very difficult task, even a perverse one in terms of the wide-ranging but eclectic study that surrounds her chosen thesis. Because of the diverse nature of her sources, and the synthetic nature of the linkages she tries to establish, much of this difficulty brushes off on her examiners in attempting to assess the validity of her conclusions. This is caused not only because her range necessarily tests my expertise, but also because of the nature of her writing, which is sometimes more assertive than deductive, associative rather than analytical. I have a sense of a thesis being imposed upon a widely discrepant range of sources rather than emerging from them. Herein lies my difficulty, for this is a thesis without a clearly defined body of primary sources, though one could have been produced for many sections, whilst other sections seem to derive entirely from secondary reading. Thus the more normal skills of the deduction and development of an argument from clearly rehearsed sources is much less apparent here. She seems sometimes to miss the substance of issues and to become engrossed with certain accidents of the matter in view. Another difficulty is the differing genre employed as the thesis develops from intellectual history to the sociology of elites. Or again, it seems that the full prescription has not been fulfilled in the writing: e.g., p18 promises a discussion in the third section of Virginia Woolf, John Baillie and William Temple, but in the event Temple seems to get left out. I am also curious as to why Ms Donner looks for the Victorian legacy where she does. Presumably it is because with Pattison, Jowett and Essays and Reviews as her starting point, she wants to lodge the whole enterprise within the Broad Church Tradition. Otherwise she might have looked at areas of more anticpated traditionalism, in theology e.g. the writings of anglo-catholic thinkers like Austin Farrer and E.L.Mascall, or the whole tradition of the neo-orthodox; in practice, debates about language and worship [whether in Prayer Book or Scripture], about the nature of priestood, sacraments, and the received beliefs of Church, and about the nature of authority in the church. All of which might have added some density to the thinning ranks. There is, therefore, much to criticize. On the other hand, there are strengths. The candidate demonstates a shrewd intelligence, even if it is not always well-focussed, but this should not detract from some of her interesting insights. Though sometimes overtaken by jargon and sometimes dense in exposition, she is capable of writing quite well. Moreover she has clearly eschewed the safe option, and thus needs to be rewarded for her courage, even if the end result is not altogether successful. Again the dissertation demonstrates a clear and conscious hypothesis, indeed at times it seems too clear and commanding. There is a freshness that comes from a mind untraditioned by familiarity with the British scene from childhood, though sometimes that leads to imperfect understanding of situations and processes.
7
Böhnke, Dietmar. "Screening the Victorians: Representations of the Victorian Age in Contemporary British Films." Karl Stutz Verlag, 2006. https://ul.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A32032.
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Good, Joseph. "The Dark Circle: Spiritualism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4053.
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This dissertation offers critical and theoretical approaches for understanding depictions of Spiritualism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian fiction. Spiritualism has fascinated and repelled writers since the movement's inception in Hydesville, New York, in 1848, and continues to haunt writers even today. The conclusion of this dissertation follows Spiritualist fiction as it carries over into the Neo-Victorian genre, by discussing how themes and images of Victorian Spiritualism find "life after death" in contemporary work. Spiritualism, once confined to the realm of the arcane and academically obscure, has begun to attract critical attention as more scholars exhume the body of literature left behind by the Spiritualist movement. This new critical attention has focused on Spiritualism's important relationship with various elements of Victorian culture, particularly its close affiliation with reform movements such as Women's Rights.
The changes that occurred in Spiritualist fiction reflect broader shifts in nineteenth-century culture. Over time, literary depictions of Spiritualism became increasingly detached from Spiritualism's original connection with progressive reform. This dissertation argues that a close examination of the trajectory of Spiritualist fiction mirrors broader shifts occurring in Victorian society. An analysis of Spiritualist fiction, from its inception to its final incarnation, offers a new critical perspective for understanding how themes that initially surfaced in progressive midcentury fiction later reemerged--in much different forms--in Gothic fiction of the fin-de-siécle. From this, we can observe how these late Gothic images were later recycled in Neo-Victorian adaptations.
In tracing the course of literary depictions of Spiritualism, this analysis ranges from novels written by committed advocates of Spiritualism, such as Florence Marryat's The Dead Man's Message and Elizabeth Phelps's The Gates Ajar, to representations of Spiritualism written in fin-de-siécle Gothic style, including Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. My analysis also includes the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who conceived of Spiritualism as either "the birth of a new science or the revival of an old humbug." Hawthorne's ambivalence represents an important and heretofore completely overlooked aspect of Spiritualist literature. He is poised between the extremes of proselytizing Spiritualists and fin-de-siécle skeptics. Hawthorne wanted to believe in Spiritualism but remained unconvinced. As the century wore on, this brand of skepticism became increasingly common, and the decline of Spiritualism's popularity was hastened by the repudiation of the movement by its founders, the Fox Sisters, in 1888. Ultimately, despite numerous attempts both scientific and metaphysical, the Victorian frame of mind proved unable to successfully reconcile the mystical element of Spiritualism with the increasingly mechanistic materialist worldview emerging as a result of rapid scientific advances and industrialization. The decline and fall of the Spiritualist movement opened the door to the appropriation of Spiritualism as a Gothic literary trope in decadent literature. This late period of Spiritualist fiction cast a long shadow that subsequently led to multiple literary reincarnations of Spiritualism in the Gothic Neo-Victorian vein.
Above all, Spiritualist literature is permeated by the theme of loss. In each of the literary epochs covered in this dissertation, Spiritualism is connected with loss or deficit of some variety. Convinced Spiritualist writers depicted Spiritualism as an improved form of consolation for the bereaved, but later writers, particularly those working after the collapse of the Spiritualist movement, perceived Spiritualism as a dangerous form of delusion that could lead to the loss of sanity and self. Fundamentally, Spiritualism was a Victorian attempt to address the existential dilemma of continuing to live in a world where joy is fleeting and the journey of life has but a single inexorable terminus. Writers like Phelps and Marryat admired Spiritualism as it promised immediate and unbroken communion with the beloved dead. The dead and the living existed together perpetually. Thus, the bereaved party had no incentive to progress through normative cycles of grief and mourning, as there was no genuine separation between the living and the dead. In the words of one of Marryat's own works of Spiritualist propaganda, there is no death.
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Ho, Lai Ming. "Neo-Victorian cannibalism : a reading of contemporary neo-Victorian fiction." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2013. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/neovictorian-cannibalism(b9d54eae-5d4b-44b6-8e30-0f91fcb28e0c).html.
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This thesis is about a body of contemporary neo-Victorian novels whose uneasy relationship with the past can be theorised in terms of aggressive eating, even cannibalism. Cannibalism operates on different levels throughout many works, and there is a sense of surreptitious insistence about it in the genre as a whole. Not only is the imagery of eating repeatedly used by critics to comprehend neo-Victorian literature, the theme of cannibalism itself also appears overtly or implicitly in a number of the novels and their Victorian prototypes, thereby mirroring the cannibalistic relationship between the contemporary and the Victorian. I argue that aggressive eating or cannibalism can be seen as a pathological and defining characteristic of neo-Victorian fiction. It provides a framework for understanding the genre’s origin, its conflicted, ambivalent and violent relationship with its Victorian predecessors and the grotesque and gothic effects that it generates in the fiction. Each chapter hinges on one type of ’cannibal’ through which the discussion of the theory of neo-Victorian cannibalism is elucidated. The first chapter investigates the phenomenon of incorporating the biographies of Victorian celebrities in neo-Victorian fiction. Using Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress (2008) and Richard Flanagan’s Wanting (2008), I discuss how Charles Dickens and Sir John Franklin are portrayed as sexual and colonial Bluebeard cannibals, a form of representation which provides a revisionist critique of the misogynist, oppressive and racialist undercurrent of Victorian ideology. The second chapter examines the vampiric cannibal and analyses three neo-Victorian adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) - Tom Holland’s Supping With Panthers (1996), Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Dracula (2008) and Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead (2009). In these works, the writers simultaneously cannibalise the original text and its author’s biography, and in so doing challenge Stoker’s authorial power and clear a creative space for themselves. In the third chapter, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) is read as an important intertext. The chapter studies the representation of Bertha, a character often portrayed in cannibalistic terms, in Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and three relatively recent neo-Victorian novels - Lin Haire-Sargeant’s H: The Story of Heathcliff’s Journey Back to Wuthering Heights (1992), D.M. Thomas’s Charlotte: The Final Journey of Jane Eyre (2000) and Emma Tennant’s Adele: Jane Eyre’s Hidden Story (2002). I argue that a narrative reorientation away from Bertha in the three later novels, which cannibalise both Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, prompts us to reconsider the level of political engagementof the neo-Victorian genre. The fourth chapter centres on the ’academic cannibal’ and discusses the role of scholarly characters in neo-Victorian novels including A.S. Byatt’s Possession (1990), Graham Swift’s Ever After (1992), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006), Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr Y (2006) and Justine Picardie’s Daphne (2008). I argue that the use of scholars in these novels reflects a mutual dependence between the neo-Victorian genre and the academy, a relationship that can be viewed as both cannibalistic and competitive. Finally, the Conclusion speculates on how, under certain circumstances, the Victorian can be seen to cannibalise the contemporary and how the relationship between past and present will continue to evolve in the neo-Victorian genre.
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Marmion, Bob, and victorianvolunteers@hotmail com. "The Victorian Volunteer Force on the central Victorian Goldfields, 1858-1883." La Trobe University. School of Arts and Education, 2003. http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au./thesis/public/adt-LTU20050430.150445.
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During the 19th century, defence was a major issue in Victoria as indeed it was in other
British colonies and the United Kingdom. To help defend themselves, self governing
colonies throughout the Empire enlisted local citizens to serve as part time soldiers on
a voluntary basis.
The Victorian government in 1859 - 60 took a calculated risk in adopting a Volunteer
Force to underpin the whole colonial defence scheme, particularly as the military
effectiveness of the citizen soldiers was questionable due to the lack of any real
discipline within the Force and the part time nature of the military service. Whilst the
savings which resulted (from using Volunteers rather than expensive Imperial troops)
were spent on building forts and purchasing ordnance to protect Port Phillip Bay, there
were other advantages to be gained from the government decision. It harnessed the
considerable groundswell of public patriotism and pride in the Empire to ensure the
development of a colonial society with strong links to Britain.
The Government also linked Volunteering, stability and patriotism together as part of
a less obvious agenda for the goldfields. In a period of lingering unrest only a few
short years after Eureka, the Volunteers provided a clear indication of government
power and yet another sign (along with the judicial system, education, language) of the
importance and expanse of British society. Should there be any civil unrest on the
goldfields, the local Corps were ideally suited to the role of civil control. On a number
of occasions, the Volunteer Corps were called out to maintain law and order.
The thesis studies a major group of over 5,100 men on the goldfields over two
decades, particularly with regard to their motives for joining the Volunteers and their
demographics such as ages, occupations, addresses, activities and the networks
between members. By addressing the Corps demographics it is possible to understand
the role played by the Volunteers in the development of goldfields society.
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Kleinecke-Bates, Iris. "Victorian realities : representations of the Victorian age on 1990s British television." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.443313.
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Brittain, Melisa. "Dangerous crossings, Victorian feminism, imperialist discourse, and Victoria Cross's New woman in indigenous space." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ40398.pdf.
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Hervey, Benjamin Alan. "Late Victorian horror fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.397430.
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Matthews, Jodie. "Reading the Victorian Gypsy." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2008. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54684/.
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Nineteenth-century texts that focus on Gypsies construct a figure who ought to be locatable in a racial hierarchy, in a class system, and along gender lines. When read psychoanalytically, however, the texts reveal signs of having repressed uncertainty about where such boundaries may be drawn and what they signify. The figure of the Gypsy, existing literally and metaphorically on the verges of society, disrupts the stable locations of identity fenced off by discourse even as texts hope to offer the Gypsy as an example of how one may categorise others. Chapter One studies the figure of the Gypsy in the work of Walter Scott (1771–1832) and its relationship to that of a later writer, George Borrow (1803–1881). Chapter Two concentrates on the work of the Romany Ryes, examining the discursive implications of their impulse to conserve Gypsy culture in the face of its perceived annihilation. Chapter Three explores the construction of the Gypsy between engraved image and written text in the 'Illustrated London News', reading the ways in which the two forms work together on the page. Chapter Four looks at George Eliot's 'The Spanish Gypsy' (1868) and 'Daniel Deronda' (1876) to examine the differences in the representation of a male Jew and female Gypsy in her work. The final chapter discusses the pervasive stereotype of Gypsies kidnapping children in the context of children's literature. The readings performed throughout the thesis are underpinned by a deconstructive psychoanalysis (drawing on Jacques Derrida's rethinking of the work of Sigmund Freud), which not only lends the project a methodology but demands an exploration of the ethics and responsibilities of reading and writing now, in the past, and for the future The texts are thus under analysis and are seen to preserve traces of the nineteenth-century discourses in which they are woven (and which they also weave). Such conservation also always institutes a difference, however, and the attempted repression, silencing, banishment and fetishization of all the uncontained features of the figure of the Gypsy do not mean that the text has the Gypsy under control all of these things come back to haunt it.
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Muscato, Melinda. "Victorian children's book illustrations." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/898.
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In the nineteenth century, as society in Victorian Britain adjusted to the effects of urbanization and industrialization, social roles began to shift, changes that were reflected in the children’s book illustrations of Randolph Caldecott, Henry J. Ford, and Beatrix Potter. This time period was considered the golden age of children’s book illustrations due to a large boom in both number and quality available. These children’s books illustrators had a lasting impact on culture and aesthetics and reinforced the social constructions of the new urban middle class. Randolph Caldecott’s illustrations of nursery rhymes gave new interpretations to familiar texts, some of which furthered shifts in gender roles for both males and females. Andrew Lang’s fairy tale series, illustrated by H. J. Ford, walked a fine line between high art ideals and consumerism. Ford’s illustrations referenced the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. The fairytale genre has emphasized female roles from its inception, and Lang's and Ford's focus on an essentially English femininity added complexities to messages about the ideal woman. Beatrix Potter’s subversive work can be seen as the culmination of the Victorian period. She satirized the ideal woman at home, illuminating the anxieties and pressures of the domestic sphere and exploring the Victorians' fixation with the etiquettes of social rank. In an attempt to further the scope of traditional art history, this dissertation shows that, even in consumerist-driven visual culture, even in seemingly inconsequential children’s book illustration, we can see the impact of key social changes and values.
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O'Neill, John Christopher. "The neo-Victorian novel." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.620600.
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Donovan, Rob. "Drink in Victorian Norwich." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.399803.
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This thesis maintains that Victorian social cohesion depended to a significant degree on drink. In Norwich and other urban centres, population growth led to an expansion of the supply of alcoholic drink. Inadequate sanitation and water supply problems meant that beer answered a dietary need for a liquid that was safe to drink. Alcohol provided depressant comfort in the face of poverty and squalor for the working class. In these circumstances, most social and political functions were connected with the public house. Most public houses in Norwich experienced sufficiently long periods of publican stability to have played an important role in the development of working-class communities. At a time of acute housing problems, the public house provided both a public space and relief from squalor. In Norwich and elsewhere, the urban elite used working-class dependence on drink to their own political advantage at election time through bribery, treating, and the control of organised gangs of `roughs'. These traditional practices were eventually proscribed by the government at Westminster but proved difficult to eradicate in Norwich. There was little overt interference with the infrastructure of drinking in Norwich. Although Norwich had the highest density of drinking places to population in England, the city could boast the lowest rate of drunkenness. This infrastructure was effective not least because brewers were key members of the urban elite and were influential in the Watch Committee that controlled the policing of the city. However, the Temperance Movement developed as a consequence of the challenge to traditional Christian ethics presented by the consumption of drink in this new urban context. By 1901, Norwich was becoming a more sober, compassionate and just society, but this was not due to the victory of Temperance but rather to a shift in the `structure of feeling' that placed more emphasis on social responsibility.
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Bartlett, Jami Lyn. "The Victorian T.S. Eliot." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 1998. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/22.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
English; Literature
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Holder, R. J. "Victorian classical town halls." Thesis, University of Reading, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.373468.
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Cheshire, James Peter. "Early Victorian stained glass." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.244419.
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Harris, Jan G. "Mormons in Victorian England." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 1987. http://patriot.lib.byu.edu/u?/MTGM,13967.
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Pickles, Suzanne. "Post-authenticity : literary dialect and realism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian social novels." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2018. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/22690/.
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This thesis considers what a post-authenticity approach to literary dialect studies should be. Once we have departed from the idea of literary dialect studies being engaged in ascertaining whether or not the fictional representation of nonstandard speech varieties can be matched with those same varieties in the external world, how should we study the dialect we find in novels? I argue that literary dialect studies should be placed within critical work on the realist novel, since the representation of speech, like the broader field of realism, aims to reflect an external world, one with which the reader can identify. This, as yet, has not been done. My approach is to place greater emphasis on the role of the reader. I consider the ways in which writers use literary dialect to manage readers' responses to characters, and the nature of those responses. I give a close reading of Victorian and neo-Victorian novels to show that, whilst the subject matter of these works has changed over time to suit a modern readership, the dialect representation - its form and the attitudes to language usage it communicates - is conservative. Referring to recent surveys, and through my own research with real readers, I show that nonstandard speakers are still regarded as less well-educated and of a lower social class than those who speak Standard English. This, I argue, is why writers encode such attitudes into their works and are able to manipulate readers' responses to characters. I argue that it is the interplay of text, reader, and the broader cultural context in which the work is both written and read, that gives meaning to the literary dialect and brings it within the scope of studies of the realist novel.
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Martin, Eoin. "Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the patronage of contemporary sculpture in Victorian Britain 1837-1901." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/63776/.
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Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Prince Albert (1819-1861) have long loomed large in Victorian sculpture studies. Numerous scholars have examined the public statues of Victoria and Albert that were erected throughout the United Kingdom and across the British Empire between the 1840s and the 1920s. Yet, to date, the couple’s own patronage of sculpture has been largely overlooked. In light of this lacuna in the scholarship, this thesis examines the formation, display and dissemination of Victoria’s and Albert’s sculpture collection; explores the public sculpture projects with which they were involved; and analyses contemporary responses to their patronage. In so doing, it reveals what sculpture meant to Victoria and Albert personally; what their patronage meant to the contemporary sculpture profession; and what impact they had on the wider history and historiography of Victorian sculpture. The thesis is organised chronologically and broadly divided into three periods, representing three distinct but interrelated trends in the formation, arrangement, dissemination and reception of Victoria’s and Albert’s collection and the changing status of royal patronage. The first is the period between Victoria’s and Albert’s marriage in 1840 and Albert’s death in 1861. In this period, the couple’s patronage was prolific, varied and widely disseminated. They commissioned and acquired an extensive amount of sculpture for the royal residences and closely involved themselves with numerous public sculpture projects such as the sculpture programme in the New Houses of Parliament. This thesis demonstrates the complex imbrication of the couple’s public and private patronage of sculpture by revealing the extent to which their involvement with public projects informed their private patronage and the degree to which this fed into their public image as patrons. The second part looks at the decade after Albert’s death, a period in which Victoria concentrated her patronage almost exclusively on memorial busts and statues of him. Her various memorial commissions have often been treated interchangeably as simple indexes of her legendary grief. This thesis restores specificity to this body of memorial sculpture and uncovers the extent and sophistication of Victoria’s patronage in this period. However, it also shows the damage done to her reputation as a patron through her seemingly relentless desire to commission posthumous portraits of Albert. The third part concentrates on the last three decades of Victoria’s life. It reveals the extent to which she remained active as a patron and the degree to which her taste for sculpture evolved in the 1880s and 1890s. Yet, Victoria’s patronage was indelibly associated with mid-century sculptors whom Edmund Gosse, chief evangelist of ‘The New Sculpture’ dismissed as representative of ‘the dark age’ in the history of British sculpture. At a time when public statues of Victoria by some of the leading sculptors of the age were being erected across the globe, her position as a leading patron of contemporary sculpture was steadily undermined by the perception that she was stuck in the past.
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O'Brien, Antony, and antony obrien@deakin edu au. "The 1859 election on the Ovens." Deakin University. School of Social and International Studies, 2004. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20080808.120248.
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The Victorian general election of 1859 occurred during a time of social transition and electoral reformation, which extended the vote to previously unrepresented adult males. Gold discoveries, including those on the Ovens, triggered the miners insistent demands for access to land and participation in the political process.
The thesis identifies issues, which emerged during the election campaign on the Ovens goldfields, surrounding Beechworth. The struggle centred on the two Legislative Assembly seats for the Ovens and the one Legislative Council seat for the Murray District. Though the declared election issue was land reform, it concealed a range of underlying tensions, which divided the electorate along lines of nationality and religion. Complicating these tensions within the European community was the Chinese presence throughout the Ovens. The thesis suggests the historical memory of the French Revolution, the European Revolutions of 1848 and the Catholic versus Protestant revivals divided the Ovens goldfield community. The competing groups formed alliances; a Beechworth-centred grouping of traders, merchants and the Constitutions editor, ensured the existing conservative agenda triumphed over those perceived radicals who sought reform. In the process the land hungry miners did not gain any political representation in the Legislative Assembly, while a prominent Catholic squatter who advocated limited land reform was defeated for the Legislative Council seat.
Two daily Beechworth papers, Ovens and Murray Advertiser and its fierce competitor, the Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer are the major primary sources for the thesis.
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Davis, Dorinda Mari. ""A Blaze of Light and Finery": The Victorian Theater and the Victorian Theatrical Novel." Scholar Commons, 2011. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3065.
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The concept of the Victorian antitheatrical prejudice is both well-established and well-respected. This paper, however, examining the Victorian theatrical novel and the Victorian theater in terms of that prejudice, finds the ready assumption of the prejudice to be problematic at best. A close look at three novels that together span the early to mid-nineteenth century shows that, far from being ubiquitous and unilateral, antitheatricality was in many cases an anomaly; indeed, many of those novelistic elements that have long been assumed to be antitheatrical address different issues altogether. Employing close readings of the novels--Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury's The Half-Sisters--along with an examination of historical documents, and utilizing as well current scholarship in Victorian theater and theatrical novels, I demonstrate that the Victorians were instead keen appreciators of theater, and that the Victorian "antitheatrical novel" was in many cases far more interested in the authenticity of human interplay than in the inauthenticity of staged role-play.
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Gilloran, Alan J. "Family formation in Victorian Scotland." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29117.
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Zare-Behtash, Esmail, and ezb21@cam ac uk. "FitzGerald's Rubáiyát: A Victorian Invention." The Australian National University. Department of English, 1997. http://thesis.anu.edu.au./public/adt-ANU20010824.152643.
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This study was written in the belief that FitzGerald did not so much translate a poem as invent a persona based on the Persian astronomer and mathematician (but not poet) Omar Khayyám. This 'invention' opened two different lines of interpretation and scholarship, each forming its own idea of a 'real' Omar based on FitzGerald's invention. One line sees Omar as a hedonist and nihilist; the other as a mystic or Sufi. My argument first is that the historical Omar was neither the former nor the latter; second, FitzGerald's Rubáiyát is a 'Victorian' product even if the raw material of the poem belongs to the eleventh-century Persia.
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The Introduction tries to find a place for the Rubáiyát in the English nineteenth-century era.
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Chapter One sets FitzGerald's Rubáiyát in perspective. First, it surveys the general background and context to the lives and careers of Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyám in order to show how FitzGerald's life was affected by some of the main concerns of the period; and that Omar was neither a hedonist nor a mystic; Secondly, it surveys four major critical studies which have generated different approaches to and emphases in the study and the translation of the rubáiyát attributed to Omar Khayyám.
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Chapter Two reviews some examples of Persian language and literature as they were perceived by British readers and authors and shows the reception of Persian poetry in general up to and including the Victorian period. Then it traces FitzGerald's progress with Persian literature, showing how the other Persian poets he read influenced his understanding or 'creation' of the Rubáiyát, and how he discarded the great Persian poets but retained Omar Khayyám as 'his property.'
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Chapter Three traces FitzGerald's career as a translator and attempts to give general characteristics of Victorian poetry to show how FitzGerald's version can be seen a Victorian product. Study of the poetry of the period shows the heterogeneity of Victorian poetry and FitzGerald's poem is another example of this multiplicity. The Rubáiyát should be read as a revolt against general Victorian values: optimism, earnestness, Puritanism, and science development.
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Chapter Four accounts for the initial neglect of the poem and then for the popular reception of the Rubáiyát by the Pre-Raphaelites and shows aspects in particular appealed to his contemporaries (like R. Browning) which, in turn, is a way of measuring the success of FitzGerald's 'Victorian' invention.
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Roberts, Caroline. "Harriet Martineau and Victorian ideologies." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.359951.
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London, Christopher W. "British architecture in Victorian Bombay." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.385562.
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Cusick, Edmund. "George MacDonald and Victorian fantasy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.293456.
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Parveen, Nazia. "Oscar Wilde and Victorian psychology." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/10387.
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This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s theories of art in connection with specific debates ongoing in Victorian psychology as it emerged in the periodical press. By cross examining Wilde’s periodical contributions with psychological theories, concepts and discussions disseminated through periodicals this thesis offers a contextual account of Wilde’s creativity. Scholars generally look to Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks to gain an insight into his interaction with scientific culture. While the notebooks are an invaluable source to scholars they only cover Wilde’s learning in the 1870s and therefore exclude the influential context of the 1880s when he was engaged as a journalist for numerous periodicals and newspapers. Chapter one will demonstrate how reading Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray alongside neighbouring articles in the Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine reveals the hidden context of psychology in which the editors of the issue attempted to establish the text. The second chapter explores Wilde’s engagement in the disputes over psychological nomenclature alongside the psychology of George Henry Lewes, James Sully and other contributors. The third chapter will investigate the network in which Wilde’s reviewing for the Pall Mall Gazette established him. Wilde’s exchanges with aesthetic theorists and fellow reviewers Sully and Grant Allen will also be documented. The fourth chapter will demonstrate how Wilde creatively engaged with theories of atomism, emotionalist psychology and physiological aesthetics. The final chapter will examine the ethical questions posed by Wildean aesthetics in relation to scientific naturalism. Wilde originally communicated his theories through periodicals but also delivered lectures (which were reported in magazines), as well as eventually transforming his periodical articles into book publications. While this thesis places the onus on the periodical formats of Wilde’s texts, his lectures and revised editions of his writings will also be examined where relevant.
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Bryden, Inga Marie Hadley. "Victorian Arthurianism : remodelling the past." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.357689.
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Crofts, Russell. "Victorian narrative of multiple selfhood." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.310251.
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Flavin, Michael A. "Gambling in the Victorian novel." Thesis, University of Kent, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.297398.
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Waters, M. D. "The garden in Victorian literature." Thesis, University of Kent, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.355151.
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Greenwood, Martin. "Victorian ideal sculpture 1830-1880." Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.289031.
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Cooper, Suzanne Fagence. "Picturing music in Victorian England." Thesis, Bucks New University, 2005. http://bucks.collections.crest.ac.uk/9932/.
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This thesis analyses musical imagery created by Victorian artists. It considers paintings, decorative arts and photography, as well as contemporary art criticism and poetry. Focusing on artists associated with Pre-Raphaelitism and aestheticism, it shows how they used musical subjects to sidestep narrative conventions and concentrate instead on explorations of femininity, colour, mood and sensuality. This thesis begins by considering the musical experience of four artists - Frederic Leighton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and James Whistler - and the influence of personal taste on their musical subjects. It then looks at the depiction of non-Western performance, including images of dancing girls. The third chapter explores the links between music and worship, and the subversion of traditional religious iconography by aestheticist artists. Chapter four analyses images of musical women, and especially the late-Victorian interest in mermaids and sirens. The theme of sensuality continues with an investigation of the connections between music and colour, by assessing the influence of Renaissance Venice, Wagner and French theories of synaesthesia on the Victorian art-world. The final chapter looks at the interconnectedness of music, nostalgia and bereavement in aestheticist painting. Although this study approaches the subject of music-in-art from a number of different directions, there are two key themes that underpin the interpretation of musical images. The first is that musical symbolism was malleable: music could signify both religious devotion and sexual passion. The second is that, in the Victorian imagination, music was oppositional and unstable. It was linked with femininity, emotion, colour, desire and the supernatural. This thesis demonstrates that the idea of music was a key component in the emergence of anti-Establishment art in Victorian England.
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Louttit, Erin. "Rudyard Kipling and Victorian Buddhism." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3543.
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The thesis recontextualises the fiction of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century writer Rudyard Kipling by exploring aspects of Victorian Buddhism in a selection of his published work. It demonstrates his engagement with a variety of Buddhist histories and cultures, showing a serious artistic and imaginative response to and interpretation of Buddhism. Focusing primarily on the novel Kim, the thesis develops existing criticism, examining the character of the lama. Additionally, it studies features of Victorian Buddhism other than textual sources, drawing on work by scholars in fields such as the history of art and the history of religion. As well as considering varied Buddhist elements in Kim, the thesis examines the theme of the survival of the soul, situating short stories from various periods of Kipling's writing life in the context of scholarly debates about Nirvana and reincarnation. Attention is also given to critically neglected travel writing from the Letters of Marque series written for periodical publication. Kipling's work is shown to be deeply concerned with and sympathetic to Buddhism and Buddhist cultures.
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Smith, Jeffrey Wayne. "George MacDonald and Victorian society." Thesis, University of Dundee, 2013. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/7e0872ad-8765-4fd9-9942-53ff0b6c25e3.
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This thesis approaches the ways George MacDonald viewed and represented Victorian society in his novels by analysing select social issues which he felt compelled to address. Chapter One introduces the thesis. It contains a review of critical commentary on MacDonald’s work, as well as discussions on his non-fictional texts and essays, industrialism, and the great rural-urban divide of the nineteenth century. Chapter Two concentrates on MacDonald’s representations of the city in Robert Falconer (1868), The Vicar’s Daughter (1872), and Weighed and Wanting (1882) by underscoring parallels between Octavia Hill’s housing and environmental schemes and situations which he experienced firsthand. Chapter Three examines the influence of Nature on MacDonald’s theology and social views. Special emphasis is placed on Wordsworth and the development of MacDonald’s unique pantheism in his texts, such as the short story, ‘A Journey Rejourneyed’ (1865-6), Guild Court (1868), Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872), What’s Mine’s Mine (1886), and Home Again (1887). Chapter Four uncovers MacDonald’s involvement with the animal welfare movement during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Discussions on vivisection, vegetarianism, hunting, animal abuse, evolution, and degeneration are provided with a wide range of MacDonald’s texts, such as Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865), Paul Faber, Surgeon (1879), The Marquis of Lossie (1877), A Rough Shaking (1890), and Heather and Snow (1893). Chapter Five offers a short summation of the thesis. It affirms that MacDonald was deeply troubled by certain social issues that were raised within his society and would use his fiction to express his concerns. The conclusion also offers a few suggestive topics for ongoing research in the field of this thesis.
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Rodriguez, Mia U. "Medea in Victorian Women's Poetry." University of Toledo Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355934808.
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Forsberg, Laura. "The Miniature and Victorian Literature." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845467.
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The Victorian period is famously characterized by its massiveness, with the vast extent of the British Empire, the enormous size of the nineteenth-century city and the massive scale of the three-volume novel. Yet the Victorians were fascinated with miniature objects, which seemed in their small scale to belong to another world. Each miniature object prompted a unique imaginative fantasy of intimacy (the miniature painting), control (the toy), wonder (the microscope and the fairy) or knowledge (the miniature book). In each case, the miniature posited the possibility of reality with a difference, posing the implicit question: What if? This dissertation traces the miniature across a range of disciplines, from aesthetics and art history to science and technology, and from children’s culture to book history. In so doing, it shows how the miniature points beyond the limits of scientific knowledge and technical capabilities to the outer limits of the visual and speculative imagination. In novels, the miniature introduces elements of fantasy into the framework of realism, puncturing the fabric of the narrative with the internal reveries and longings of often-silent women and children. Miniature objects thus function less as realist details than as challenges to realism. In charting the effect of the miniature, both as a portal into the Victorian imagination and as a challenge to narrative realism, this dissertation puts the techniques of material history to new use. It aims not to describe the world of the Victorians but to show how the Victorians imagined other worlds.English
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Anger, Suzy. "Victorian hermeneutics and literary interpretation /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9374.
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Prince, Kathryn Sarah. "Shakespeare in the Victorian periodicals /." New York : Routledge, 2008. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb41198261b.
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Acar, Sibel. "Intersections:architecture And Photography In Victorian Britain." Master's thesis, METU, 2010. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12611169/index.pdf.
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Architecture and photography have always been closely interacted since the invention of photography in the late 1830s.While architecture has been captured as one of the main subjects of photography, photography has served architecture as a valuable tool of representation. Focusing on the frame defined by Victorian Britain, this study tries to capture intersecting histories between photography and architecture. Accordingly three intersections were defined: the first intersection corresponds to the simultaneous development of photography and architectural photographythe second to theinteraction between architectural photography and architectural theory/practice
and the third to the relation between architectural photography and architectural historiography.
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Stewart, Clare. "Fighting spirit : Victorian women's ghost stories." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2000. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1610/.
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Statham, Todd Regan. "Dogma and history in Victorian Scotland." Thesis, McGill University, 2011. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=96661.
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That the study of the history of Christian doctrine and dogma had its heyday in nineteenth-century German Protestantism is well known. What is not well known is that theologians in two Presbyterian denominations in Victorian Scotland, the Free Church and the United Presbyterians, made the most concerted attempts in an English-speaking Protestant tradition to account historically for the genesis and progress of doctrine. This dissertation recovers this half-century of Reformed theological labour and neglected chapter in Victorian church history through close analysis of how prominent theologians in these evangelical bodies wrestled with the new, disconcerting idea that doctrine develops in history. The story that emerges tells of Scottish Presbyterian theology in the period c. 1845-c. 1900 coming to recognize that church doctrine was not simply the repetition of biblical teaching. Doctrine was the church's confession of God's truth—and the church was in history. Nonetheless, because the historical spirit was far from monolithic in the nineteenth century, the manner in which theologians from this tradition negotiated their Reformed and evangelical doctrinal inheritance with the claims of history was markedly diverse.William Cunningham (1805-61) rejected John Henry Newman's groundbreaking An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) by reiterating the classical Protestant doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Although subsequent theologians also held this belief, their understanding of revelation was being historicized. Robert Rainy (1826-1906) drew upon a concept of "salvation history" then current among conservative German theologians to argue that doctrine was not deposited in Scripture as Cunningham assumed; rather, it formed as the church interpreted God's acts in history. Rainy's tacit admission that doctrine, being historically conditioned, was also historically conditional was radicalized by A. B. Bruce (1831-1899). In concert with the influential Ritschlian critique of dogma, Bruce urged evangelical theology to tear down the "scholastic" dogmas of yesteryear to rebuild anew on the witness of the historical Jesus. In firm opposition, James Orr (1844-1913) creatively deployed philosophical idealism to show how orthodox dogma had developed over centuries as the rational unfolding of Spirit in history. Accordingly, the system of doctrine maintained in evangelical Protestantism was largely inviolable.Along with summarizing some themes common in the diverse handling of the problem of history and dogma by Free Church and United Presbyterian divines, the concluding chapter tentatively suggests where their labours intersect contemporary ecumenical interest in the issue of the historical development of doctrine.Il est bien connu que l'histoire du dogme et de la doctrine chétienne a connu son apogée au sein du protestantisme allemand du dix-neuvième siècle. Ce qui est moins connu c'est que des théologiens de deux dénomination presbytériennes de l'écosse victorienne, la Free Church et les Presbytériens Unis, ont fait le plus d'efforts concertés, au sein d'une tradition protestante anglophone, de rendre compte historiquement de la genèse et du progrès de la doctrine. Cette dissertation couvre ce demi-siècle de travail théologique réformé, un chapitre négligé de l'histoire de l'église, particulièrement par une analyse attentive de la manière dont d'éminents théologiens des deux corps évangéliques sus-mentionnés ont lutté avec cette idée que la doctrine connaît des développements dans l'histoire.Le récit qui en émerge rend compte de la théologie presbytérienne écossaise dans la période débutant dans les environs de 1845 à 1900 venant à reconnaître que la doctrine ne se cantonnait pas seulement à rèpéter les enseignements bibliques. La doctrine était la confession de l'Église Par rapport la vérité de Dieu – une église située dans l'histoire. Mais parce que l'esprit historique du temps était loin d'être monolithique, la manière dont les théologiens ont composé tant avec leur héritage doctrinal réformé et évangélique que les revendications de l'histoire fut marqué par la diversité. William Cunningham (1805-61) a rejeté le document innovateur de John Henry Newman, An essay on the ChristianDoctrine (1845) en rehitérant la position protestante classique sur la suffisance de l'Écriture. Par contre, même s'ils partageaient cette position, des théologiens ultérieurs avaient une compréhension plus historique de la révélation. Robert Rainy (1826-1906) utilisa le concept « d'histoire du salut » alors en usage chez les théologiens conservateurs allemands pour faire valoir que la doctrine n'était pas contenue, proprement dit, dans l'écriture comme le suggérait Cunningham, mais plutôt elle prit fome à mesure que l'Église a interprété l'inetervention de Dieu dans l'histoire. Cette admission tacite de Rainy, à savoir que la doctrine étant historiquement conditionnée était aussi historiquement conditionnelle, fut radicalisée par A.B.Bruce (1831-1899). De concert avec l'influente critique Ritschlienne du dogme, Bruce a poussé la théologie évangélique à mettre en pièces les dogmes « scholastiques » d'hier afin de reconstruire à neuf sur le témoignage du Jésus historique. Complètement à l'opposé, James Orr (1844-1913) a, de manière créative, déployé un idéalisme philosophique afin de démontrer comment le dogme orthodoxe a pris forme à travers les siècles comme le dévoilement rationnel graduel de l'Esprit dans l'histoire. Par conséquent, le système de doctrine maintenu dans le protestantisme évangélique était en grande partie inviolable.Tout en résumant certain thèmes communs dans le maniement du problème de l'histoire et du dogme par les théologiens de la Free Church et de l'Église Presbytérienne Unie, le chapître final suggère prudemment les lieux où leurs travaux croisent l'intérêt oecuménique contemporain dans la problématique du développent historique de la doctrine.
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Wood, Madeleine Alice. "Victorian familial enigmas : inheritance and influence." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2008. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2129/.
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The thesis works from the conceptual premise that the parent-child relation is constitutive of both subjectivity and narrative form in the Victorian novel: the role of the orphan, the dislocation of the family and the drive to reconstitute it, are primary concerns and condense complex issues of narrative structure, genealogical failure, and the problematisation of parental roles. There have been valuable feminist readings of specific family positions in the Victorian novel, such as ‘the mother’ or ‘the daughter’, but there is still a lack of analyses which locate narrative and thematic concerns in the dynamic interplay between parental and childhood desires: the relation between two or more subjects. I look at four novels in detail: Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son and Little Dorrit, and Wilkie Collins’ No Name and Armadale. The thesis shows how parent-child relationships are mediated through gendered conflicts: it is, in fact, almost impossible to isolate singular relationships for analysis; the family is a gestalt, becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Throughout the novels repudiated family members, or strange family ‘doubles’, become the focus for the movement of the plot: the way in which fantasy operates across a family group, rather than as an intrasubjective phenomenon, is a key concern. The analyses of the literary texts will demonstrate the processes of transformation that familial desires and fantasies undergo in the characters and in the novels themselves. The concept of generational inheritance, central to the aesthetics and psychologies of the Victorian novels considered here, motivated my turn to psychoanalytic theory. I do not limit my use of psychoanalysis to one model, instead using a dialogical approach dictated by the novels themselves; I incorporate aspects of Jean Laplanche’s theories of ‘general seduction’, in addition to Sigmund Freud’s own writings and later psychoanalytic ideas of inheritance and influence. The ‘family’ is the structuring force for the four novels under consideration. Without always attempting to create a ‘realistic’ psychology of character, Dickens creates competing worlds of personal, familial and social fantasy. The family is a site of anxiety, an anxiety which is not wholly contained, or controlled, by the narrative. Collins likewise engages with the question of inheritance, but, increasingly throughout his writings, he prioritised the emergence of female agency in the wake of a persecutory paternal narrative.
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Pemberton, Neil Ashley. "Holiness, civilisation and the victorian deaf:." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.490225.
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Worthington, Julia. "The neo-Victorian novel, 1990-2010." Thesis, De Montfort University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/9637.
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The final decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first witnessed a surge of published novels with direct and indirect connection to the Victorian era, at a time when a focus on the new millenium might have been expected. This proliferation of what came to be termed 'neo-Victorian novels' shows no sign of abating and has now given rise to scholarly research on the subject. The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the rise of the neo-Victorian novel during the period in question. After an introduction which situates the phenomenon within relevant theoretical and cultural contexts, the following chapter attempts to provide a sense of the thematic range of neo-Victorian novels through an original 'catalogue' of more than one hundred neo-Victorian novels, adopting the received neo-Victorian theoretical stance which believes that what neo-Victorian novels write about demonstrates contemporary concerns and contemporary attitudes to the Victorian as much as it attempts an accurate portrayal of a historical period. This is followed by three further chapters which focus on different structural forms in presenting 'Victorian' material: the pastiche, the split narrative and the re-write versions of the neo-Victorian novel. A core contention of the thesis is that the comparison of three different novel forms, allied to the examination of thematic areas of interest, exposes the contradictory impulse which lies at the heart of the neo-Victorian enterprise. While the continuing popularity of neo-Victorian fictions indicates a desire for a sense of continuing connection to Victorian forbears, imagined or actual, the insistence on plots which play to modern interests and sensibilities suggests that the Victorians have to 'fit' with us rather than the other way round. The various forms that the neo-Victorian novel adopts carry their own postmodern means of undermining the credibility of the Victorian world under construction.
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Wright, Jane Elizabeth. "Strains of sincerity in Victorian poetry." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.613412.
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