ABSTRACT

The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature offers 45 chapters by leading international scholars working with the most dynamic and influential political, cultural, and theoretical issues addressing Victorian literature today. Scholars and students will find this collection both useful and inspiring.

Rigorously engaged with current scholarship that is both historically sensitive and theoretically informed, the Routledge Companion places the genres of the novel, poetry, and drama and issues of gender, social class, and race in conversation with subjects like ecology, colonialism, the Gothic, digital humanities, sexualities, disability, material culture, and animal studies.

This guide is aimed at scholars who want to know the most significant critical approaches in Victorian studies, often written by the very scholars who helped found those fields. It addresses major theoretical movements such as narrative theory, formalism, historicism, and economic theory, as well as Victorian models of subjects such as anthropology, cognitive science, and religion. With its lists of key works, rich cross-referencing, extensive bibliographies, and explications of scholarly trajectories, the book is a crucial resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, while offering invaluable support to more seasoned scholars.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

Our Victorian Companions
ByDennis Denisoff

part I|107 pages

Genres and Movements

chapter 1|11 pages

Poetry

ByAlison Chapman

chapter 2|11 pages

The Novel

ByElsie B. Michie

chapter 3|12 pages

Short Forms

Serialization and Short Fiction
BySusan David Bernstein

chapter 4|13 pages

Drama and Performance 1

BySharon Aronofsky Weltman

chapter 5|11 pages

Children’s Literature

ByJessica Straley

chapter 6|14 pages

Life-Writing

ByTrev Lynn Broughton

chapter 7|12 pages

Gothic, Horror, and the Weird

Shifting Paradigms
ByRoger Luckhurst

chapter 8|11 pages

Sensation Scholarship

ByPamela K. Gilbert

chapter 9|10 pages

Decadence and Aestheticism

ByStefano Evangelista

part II|78 pages

Media Histories

chapter 10|10 pages

Book History

ByAndrew M. Stauffer

chapter 11|11 pages

Victorian Digital Humanities

ByKaren Bourrier

chapter 12|11 pages

Periodical Studies

ByLinda K. Hughes

chapter 13|9 pages

Material Culture

ByDeborah Lutz

chapter 14|11 pages

Popular Fiction and Culture

ByNicholas Daly

chapter 15|11 pages

Radical Print Culture

From Chartism to Socialism
ByIan Haywood

chapter 16|13 pages

Visual Culture

ByKate Flint

part III|76 pages

Victorian Discourses

chapter 17|9 pages

Victorianists and Their Reading

ByRachel Sagner Buurma, Laura Heffernan

chapter 18|11 pages

Aesthetic Formalism

ByRae Greiner

chapter 19|9 pages

Narrative Theory

ByElaine Auyoung

chapter 20|11 pages

The Ethical Turn

ByRebecca N. Mitchell

chapter 21|11 pages

The Future of Economic Criticisms Past

BySupritha Rajan

chapter 22|12 pages

History/Historicism

ByCatherine Gallagher

chapter 23|11 pages

Liberalism and Citizenship

ByHelen Small

part IV|83 pages

Formulations of Identity

chapter 24|11 pages

Feminism and the Canon 1

ByTalia Schaffer

chapter 25|12 pages

Gender and Sexuality

ByDuc Dau

chapter 26|11 pages

New Woman Writing

ByMolly Youngkin

chapter 27|12 pages

Disability Studies

ByMartha Stoddard Holmes

chapter 28|11 pages

The Concept of Class in Victorian Studies

ByCarolyn Betensky

chapter 29|12 pages

Race

Tracing the Contours of a Long Nineteenth Century
ByIrene Tucker

chapter 30|12 pages

The Emergence of Animal Studies

ByMartin Danahay, Deborah Denenholz Morse

part V|81 pages

Science and Spirit

chapter 31|11 pages

Technology and Literature

ByRichard Menke

chapter 32|9 pages

Brain Science

ByAnne Stiles

chapter 33|12 pages

British Psychology in the Nineteenth Century

BySuzanne Keen

chapter 34|12 pages

Anthropology and Classical Evolutionism

ByKathy Alexis Psomiades

chapter 35|13 pages

Geology and Paleontology

ByRalph O’Connor

chapter 36|12 pages

New Religions and Esotericism

ByChristine Ferguson

chapter 37|10 pages

Studies of Christianity and Judaism

ByMark Knight

part VI|90 pages

Spatiality and Environment

chapter 38|10 pages

Domesticity

ByMelissa Valiska Gregory

chapter 39|13 pages

Regionalism and Provincialism

Where Is the Local?
ByMary Ellis Gibson

chapter 40|11 pages

Postcolonial

BySukanya Banerjee

chapter 41|12 pages

Travel Writing

ByAndrea Kaston Tange

chapter 42|11 pages

Settler Colonialism

ByTamara S. Wagner

chapter 43|10 pages

Victorians in the Anthropocene

ByJesse Oak Taylor

chapter 44|11 pages

Why Victorian Ecocriticism Matters

ByLynn Voskuil

chapter 45|10 pages

Industry

BySiobhan Carroll