Victorians in Theory: From Derrida to Browning - Softcover

John Schad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 071908122X ISBN 13: 9780719081224

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2009

Synopsis

'Each century', wrote Charles Dickens '[is] more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries before'. 'Victorians in Theory' explores the startling conceit that nineteenth-century poetry is amazed by twentieth-century literary theory. In a daring and exciting departure from critical convention, Schad re-reads poststructuralist theory through Victorian poetry. Each chapter pairs a poet with a theorist: Robert Browning meets Jacques Derrida; Christina Rossetti encounters Luce Irigaray; Matthew Arnold is after Michel Foucault; Gerald Manley Hopkins dreams with Jacques Lacan; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning haunts Helene Cixous. Reading both across and between these writers, Schad opens up a radically intertextual space; he wanders, in Matthew Arnold's words, 'between two worlds'. Across this no-man's land appear a host of unlikely spectres, among them T. S. Eliot, Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Carroll's Alice, Walter Benjamin's 'angel of history', and the woman taken in adultery. This groundbreaking book will fascinate anyone interested in the Victorians or theory; at once rigorous and readable, it will appeal to both the scholar and the student.

About this title

Review:

"One reads it with a strong sense that not many more books like this are likely to be written." -- "Studies in English Literature"
"What is intriguing here is the dialectical back-and-forth intertext which elucidates both the writings of the Victorian writers and the theories of poststructuralist French theoreticians." --Roland A Champagne

About the Author:

John Schad is Professor of Modern Literature at Lancaster University

About this edition

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 071908122X
• ISBN 13: 9780719081224
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192