Scenes of Sympathy: Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction Contributor(s): Jaffe, Audrey (Author) |
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ISBN: 1501719890 ISBN-13: 9781501719899 Publisher: Cornell University Press OUR PRICE: $19.75 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Social Science | Social Classes & Economic Disparity |
Physical Information: 0.45" H x 6" W x 9" (0.64 lbs) 192 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In Scenes of Sympathy, Audrey Jaffe argues that representations of sympathy in Victorian fiction both reveal and unsettle Victorian ideologies of identity. Situating these representations within the context of Victorian visual culture, and offering new readings of key works by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ellen Wood, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Jaffe shows how mid-Victorian spectacles of social difference construct the middle-class self, and how late-Victorian narratives of feeling pave the way for the sympathetic affinities of contemporary identity politics. Perceptive and elegantly written, Scenes of Sympathy is the first detailed examination of the place of sympathy in Victorian fiction and ideology. It will redirect the current critical conversation about sympathy and refocus discussions of late-Victorian fictions of identity. |
Contributor Bio(s): Jaffe, Audrey: - Audrey Jaffe is Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Affective Life of the Average Man The Victorian Novel and the Stock-Market Graph and Vanishing Points Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience. |