Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory) - Hardcover

Wisnicki, Adrian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415955602 ISBN 13: 9780415955607

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Drawing on critical and theoretical work by Miller, Boone, Foucault, Jameson, and others, as well as cultural history, affect theory, and contemporary psychiatric literature, the author defines and explores what he calls the Victorian "conspiracy narrative tradition"--a tradition which embraces classic Victorian works like Bleak House, Great Expectations, Villette, and The Moonstone, as well as later Victorian and Edwardian novels by James, Conrad, and Chesterton, and early spy thrillers such as The Riddle of the Sands and The Thirty-Nine Steps. In reading these works as instances of a single literary tradition, the conspiracy narrative tradition, the author traces how the representation of conspiracy changes in nineteenth-century British literature and argues that many of these changes occur in response to significant Victorian-era developments, such as the European revolutions of 1848-49, the rise of British law enforcement agencies, the growth of Irish Fenian terrorism, and the fin-de-siècle waning of the British Empire. The book also explores the roles that conspiratorial indeterminacy and irony play in shaping the Victorian conspiracy narrative tradition and examines how modern works by Proust, Kafka, and Pynchon appropriate elements from Victorian conspiracy narratives. Finally, in using recent work on affect theory as well as studies of paranoia by Freud, Shapiro, and Meissner, the book traces how Victorian works fashion the paranoid subject, a discursive process that ultimately leads to the emergence of the modern fictional conspiracy theorist.

About this title

Synopsis:

Drawing on critical work by D.A. Miller, Joseph Allen Boone, Michel Foucault, and others, as well as on cultural history, affect theory, and contemporary psychiatric literature, the author defines and explores what he calls the Victorian "conspiracy narrative tradition" - a tradition which embraces classic Victorian works like "Bleak House", "Great Expectations", "Villette", and "The Moonstone", as well as later Victorian and Edwardian novels by James, Conrad, and Chesterton, and early spy thrillers such as "The Riddle of the Sands" and "The Thirty-Nine Steps".In reading these works as instances of a single literary tradition, the conspiracy narrative tradition, the author traces how the representation of conspiracy changes in nineteenth-century British literature and argue that many of these changes occur in response to significant Victorian-era developments, reading literary works by Charlotte Bront, Trollope, Dickens, Stoker, and many others in relation to historical phenomena like the European revolutions of 1848-49, the rise of British law enforcement agencies, the growth of Irish Fenian terrorism, and the fin-de-siecle waning of the British Empire.Ultimately, the author suggests that these literary works engage (and grow out of) larger cultural debates on surveillance and privacy, British political asylum practices and the presence of foreign revolutionaries in England, and the possibility of invasion by European powers like Germany and France.

About the Author:

Adrian Wisnicki's scholarly interests include Romantic poetry, Victorian fiction, contemporary African literature and culture, and postcolonial theory. He has published and presented on Pynchon, Proust, Joyce, R. Browning, D. Livingstone, and John Buchan. He is currently writing a book on Victorian colonial narratives set in Africa.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0415955602
• ISBN 13: 9780415955607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244