Nineteenth-Century British Literature Then and Now: Reading with Hindsight

Description

Envisioning today’s readers as poised between an impossible attempt to read texts as their original readers experienced them and an awareness of our own temporal moment, Simon Dentith complicates traditional prejudices against hindsight to approach issues of interpretation and historicity in nineteenth-century literature. Suggesting that the characteristic aesthetic attitude encouraged by the backward look is one of irony rather than remorse or regret, he examines works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, William Morris and John Ruskin in terms of their participation in significant histories that extend to this day. Liberalism, class, gender, political representation and notions of progress, utopianism and ecological concern as currently understood can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Just as today’s critics strive to respect the authenticity of nineteenth-century writers and readers who responded to these ideas within their historical world, so, too, do those nineteenth-century imaginings persist to challenge the assumptions of the present. It is therefore possible, Dentith argues, to conceive of the act of reading historical literature with an awareness of the historical context and of the difference between the past and the present while allowing that friction or difference to be part of how we think about a text and how it communicates. His book summons us to consider how words travel to the reality of the reader’s own time and how engagement with nineteenth-century writers’ anticipation of the judgements of future generations reveal hindsight’s capacity to transform our understanding of the past in the light of subsequent knowledge.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Nineteenth-Century British Literature Then and Now: Reading with Hindsight

  • 2016-05-06
  • 192 pages
  • Ebook
  • Routledge
• 

  Nineteenth-Century British Literature Then and Now: Reading with Hindsight

  • 2016-05-06
  • 215 pages
  • Ebook
  • Routledge

Similar books

• 

  Verbs: Aspect and Causal Structure

  By William Croft

  A fourth type of phasal analysis is offered by Timberlake (1985). Timberlake assumes an interval temporal semantics like Woisetschlaeger, and focuses on ...

• 

  Linguistic Semantics

  By William Frawley

  In some languages, this elemental opposition surfaces directly, asin the Austronesian (Chamorro: Chung and Timberlake 1985; Bikol: Givón 1984) and certain ...

• 

  Communication Law

  By Dominic G Caristi, William R Davie, Michael Cavanaugh

  Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson were performing during the halftime show when a “wardrobe malfunction” exposed for a fraction of a second the singer's ...

• 

  Communication Law: Practical Applications in the Digital Age

  By William R Davie, Dom Caristi

  Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson were performing during the halftime show when a “wardrobe malfunction” exposed for a fraction of a second the singer's ...

• 

  The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World

  By Joan Bybee, Revere Perkins, William Pagliuca

  ... 70, 85,171,231 Thomson, Greg, xix Thomson, R. W, 231, 233 Timberlake, Alan, ... J. M., 225, 235 van Putte, E., 286, 294 Vermant, S., 61,62 Vincent, N., ...

• 

  The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English

  By Clive Upton, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.

  ... 'timbol, –Z timber BR 'timble(r), -oz, -(e)rin, -od AM 'timblor, -orz, -(e)rin, ... -s Timberlake BR 'timboleik AM 'timbor,eik timberland BR 'timbaland, ...

• 

  Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication

  By William B. Gudykunst

  ... 237 St. George , R. , 38 Stilling , E. , 251 Stonequist , E. , 247 Stopka ... R. , 149 Tidwell , R. , 227 , 230 Timberlake , M. F. , 266 Ting - Toomey ...

• 

  The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers

  By Laura Oliver, M.F.A.

  ... line on Deck D. A baby squeals in the background cacophony ofthe airport. ... spirit in terms of matter, matter in terms ofspirit,” Robert Frost said.

• 

  Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships

  By Laura Stafford

  ... 30, 31, 32, 34 Durand, D., 49 Dwyer, J. W., 78 E Egan, J., 93 Eisenberg, ... 102 Floyd, K., 85, 89, 91 Forsyth, C. J., 41, 42, 48, 5.1 Frost-Knappman, ...

• 

  Emergent Literacy: Lessons for Success

  By Sonia Q. Cabell, Laura M. Justice, Joan Kaderavek

  Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 4, 331–342. Freedman, D. (2007). Scribble. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers. Frost, J. (2001).