English 300L

A bold and theatrically inventive adaptation of the literary classic that puts the interior life of the novel on stage. As a child, the orphaned Jane Eyre is taught by a succession of severe guardians to stifle her natural exuberance. A part of herself is locked away, out of view of polite society... until she arrives at Rochester's house as a governess to his young child. Soon Rochester's passionate nature reawakens Jane's hidden self, but darker secrets are stirring in the attic... Polly Teale's adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was first performed by Shared Experience Theatre Company in 1997.

This authoritative text of Bleak House was the first to be established by a comparative study of all the surviving versions of Dickens' novel, incorporating evidence from the original manuscript and corrected proofs.

Supposing "Bleak House" is an extended meditation on what many consider to be Dickens's and nineteenth-century England's greatest work of narrative fiction. Focusing on the novel's retrospective narrator, whom he identifies as Esther Woodcourt in order to distinguish her from her younger, unmarried self, John Jordan offers provocative new readings of the novel's narrative structure, its illustrations, its multiple and indeterminate endings, the role of its famous detective, Inspector Bucket, its many ghosts, and its relation to key events in Dickens's life during the years 1850 to 1853. Jordan draws on insights from narratology and psychoanalysis in order to explore multiple dimensions of Esther's complex subjectivity and fractured narrative voice. His conclusion considers Bleak House as a national allegory, situating it in the context of the troubled decade of the 1840s and in relation to Dickens's seldom-studied A Child's History of England (written during the same years as his great novel) and to Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx. Supposing "Bleak House" claims Dickens as a powerful investigator of the unconscious mind and as a "popular" novelist deeply committed to social justice and a politics of inclusiveness. Victorian Literature and Culture Series

This is the first book to address the entire career of this key Victorian author.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of the most prolific authors of the Victorian period, remains best known for her sensation fiction, but over the course of a long career contributed to a multitude of literary genres, working as a journalist, short story writer and editor, as well as authoring more than eighty novels. This exciting new collection of essays reappraises Braddon's work and offers a series of new perspectives on her literary productions. The volume is divided into two parts: the first considers Braddon's seminal sensation novel, Lady Audley's Secret; the second examines some of her lesser known fiction, including her first published novel, The Trail of the Serpent, as well as some of her twentieth-century fiction. The first collection of essays on Braddon to appear since 1999, this volume sheds new light on the 'Queen of the circulating libraries'.

Middlemarch is one of the great classic novels of the Victorian Age and has also been seen as a key turning point in the history of the genre. George Eliot's novel is widely studied and this guide will provide an introduction to its context, language, themes, criticism and afterlife, leading students to a more sophisticated understanding of the text. It is the ideal guide to reading and studying the novel, setting Middlemarch in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception. It also discusses the cultural afterlife including film and TV adaptations. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.

The overall aim of this book is the application of stylistic theories and frameworks to literary texts for a deeper level of interpretation. For this purpose the author conducted an analysis based upon the concepts of 'polyphony' and 'focalization' of three novels from different literary periods commonly labeled 'Pre-modernism', 'Modernism', and 'Postmodernism', namely, George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-2), Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1904), and Saul Bellow's Herzog (1964). Inspired by the work of Russian linguist-philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin the author attempts to clarify stylistically how polyphony is textualized in each novel and how each mode of polyphony reflects less parochial literary and cultural trends.

»To define is to limit«, Lord Henry states, and Mrs. Dalloway »would not say of anyone [...] that they were this or that«. Why then are the respective novels mostly read - and in recent adaptations rewritten - in denial of their genuinely ambiguous designs? Bringing the two literary classics together for the first time, their shared concerns regarding textual and sexual identities are revealed. Challenging an established critical record commonly related to Oscar Wilde's and Virginia Woolf's own mythologised biographies, this study underscores the value of constantly rethinking labels by liberating the texts from the limiting grip of categorical readings.

The Effective Protagonist in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel is an experiment in post-Jungian literary criticism and methodology. Its primary aim is to challenge current views about the correlation between narrative structure, gender, and the governing psychological dilemma in four nineteenth-century British novels. The overarching argument is that the opening situation in a novel represents an implicit challenge facing not the obvious hero/heroine but the individual that Terence Dawson defines as the "effective protagonist." To illustrate his claim, Dawson pairs two sets of novels with unexpectedly comparable dilemmas: Ivanhoe with The Picture of Dorian Gray and Wuthering Heights with Silas Marner. In all four novels, the effective protagonist is an apparently minor figure whose crucial function in the ordering of the events has been overlooked. Rereading these well-known texts in relation to hitherto neglected characters uncovers startling new issues at their heart and demonstrates innovative ways of exploring both narrative and literary tradition.

Gothic and Modernism establishes and interprets the significant presence and the transformations of the Gothic tradition at the dark heart of writing during the long twentieth century. Artfully introduced and collected by John Paul Riquelme, the essays?nine previously published in Modern Fiction Studies?reveal challenges to both realism and to optimistic Enlightenment attitudes in the narratives and the styles of writers ranging from Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf to Samuel Beckett, Octavia Butler, and Bret Easton Ellis. In examining nineteenth-century works and popular dark writing of the twentieth century, the contributors elucidate literary modernism's relationship to nineteenth-century Gothic traditions, effectively extending the chronological and conceptual boundaries of the former and challenging the propriety of the barrier between high and popular forms of literature. Through compelling readings of a range of modern works, they reveal the aestheticizing of the Gothic, its parodic, culturally critical tendencies, its relation to language, literary form, and time, and its response to technological threats and promises. From canonical modernism to more popular forms, such as detective fiction, science fiction, and pornohorror, this wide-ranging and accessibly written collection offers an overview of Gothic writing's persistent influence on modern works. Contributors: Penny Fielding, University of Edinburgh; Graham Fraser, Mount Saint Vincent University; Theodora Goss, Boston University; Ruth Helyer, University of Teesside; Susan Kollin, Montana State University; Patrick R. O'Malley, Georgetown University; John Paul Riquelme, Boston University; Charles J. Rzepka; Boston University; Paul K. Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania; Joseph Valente, University of Illinois