Charlotte Brontė: Legacies and afterlives (Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784992461 ISBN 13: 9781784992460

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Charlotte Brontė: Legacies and afterlives offers a timely reflection on the author’s life and work in the context of the bicentenary of her birth. Brontė’s legacy continues to evolve and the new essays in this volume, covering the period from her first publication to the present day, explain why she has remained at the forefront of western, indeed global, literary cultures.

The contributors to this volume engage innovatively with the rich variety of afterlives enjoyed by characters such as Jane Eyre and Rochester in neo-Victorian fiction, cinema and television, on the stage and on the web. They bring the story of Charlotte Brontė’s legacy up to date, exploring the devotion she has inspired among her fans and the continued fascination with her life. From obituaries to vlogs, from stage to screen, from novels to erotic makeovers, the essays show that Charlotte Brontė’s influence has been recorded in diverse and intriguing ways.

Taking a fresh look at over 150 years of engagement with one of the best-loved novelists of the Victorian period, the volume explores areas such as genre, narrative style, national and regional identities, sexuality and gender identity, literary tourism, adaptation theories, cultural studies, postcolonial and transnational readings. Students, academics and general readers will discover more about a writer who has come to be seen as an early feminist, and whose novels eloquently assert the rights of women.

About this title

Review:

"To remind oneself of just how provisional even the most "definitive" treatments of Brontė's life and work inevitably turn out to be, you have only to turn to Charlotte Brontė legacies and afterlives, edited by Amber K. Regis and Deborah Wynne. Here you will find an account of the dizzyingly varied ways in which scholars and creative practitioners have metabolized Brontė's work in the decades since her death before returning it to the world, transformed." - Kathryn Hughes, TLS January 2018

"The book begins with a scrupulous and detailed account of actual and conjectural pictures of Brontė ... I cannot think of another artist whose appearance has received so much attention. What is the difference between the continuing life of works of art and the continuing life of an artist? What difference does it make to that continuing life when the artist is a woman? ... Most of the essays in part 1 focus on the "afterlife" part of this collection, and are thoughtful, scholarly, and consistently attentive to what it now means to study a Victorian cult writer in relation to the history of her reception and to contemporary concerns." - Janet Gezari, Connecticut College, Victorian Studies, Volume 61, Number 1, Autumn 2018

About the Author:

Amber K. Regis is Lecturer in English at the University of Sheffield Deborah Wynne is Professor of English at the University of Chester -- .

About this edition

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1784992461
• ISBN 13: 9781784992460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Regis Amber, Wynne Deborah