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Neo-Victorian Fiction

This article delves into the diverse appropriations of Victorian authors, fictional characters, novels, conventions, and motifs in Neo-Victorian fiction. It explores the controversies of the Victorian era and how they are portrayed in these novels, as well as the themes of science, religion, morals, nationhood, and identity. The article also discusses the narrative style and structure often found in Neo-Victorian novels.

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Neo-Victorian Fiction

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  1. Neo-Victorian Fiction

  2. "I hope Jane Austen knows how big she is in Uruguay.” Emma Thompson at the Oscars, 1995

  3. I. Postmodernism • Crystal Palace, 1851 • Millennium Dome, 1999

  4. "Cool Britannia" both opened by the Queen • Crystal Palace: constructing the visual economy of consumercapitalism → Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) • Millennium Dome December 31,1999,Greenwich omits any reference to its predecessor; post-national space "To dispel the notion that Britain was nothing but a historical theme park, the panel decided to build – what else? – a theme park." → history: one of Britain’s most marketable commodities

  5. II. Victorian Era • The historical person’s period of reign? Literary, historical, literary theoretical, and/or aesthetic applications? – denotative and connotative meanings • Frederic Jameson: historicity in the PM era is “a perception of the present as history” • totalising myths: escapism, nostalgia, isolation • discourses of:economics (capitalism, consumerism), sexuality (repression, prostitution, hysteria), politics (imperialism, colonialism), technology (telegraph vs. internet, automata vs. AI, Frankenstein’s monster vs. cloning) ← discourses of an age: our only access to it

  6. Four current modes of relating to the 19th century: 1, neoconservative: linear narrative of degeneration, ethical, ← John Stuart Mill, Thatcherism Thatcher’s application of “Victorian Values” (family, thrift, enterprise) as a double-coded programme for the future disguised as a narrative of the past 1980s BBC programme: What the Victorians Did for Us? 2, liberal: culture as repository of timeless truths, ←Matthew Arnold 3, identitarian: reject unified vision of history, era divided by fissures, ← identity politics 4, postmodernism: history equals fiction? subcultures, for ex. steampunk

  7. Postmodern literature • 1980s: breakthrough, globalization of British culture • Thatcherism • Postmodernism: 1, style 2, philosophy 3, age • → merge high and popular culture • → intertextuality, metafiction • “the postmodern condition” (Lyotard), late capitalism + view: playful, eclectic, pastiche, retro, telling “lost” stories, for ex. Fowles, Byatt – view: exhaustion, Künstlerromane about writer’s block, literary professionals as heroes • 1st PM canon: 60s, avant-garde • 2nd PM canon: 80s, language as discourse, microhistory, cultural memory → historiographic metafiction (Linda Hutcheon), history as construction, (story)telling → rewrite Eurocentric, patriarchal history, marginal voices

  8. III. Victoriana, Victoriographies,Neo-, Post-, Retro-Victorian novel • Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies:a list of 17 novels of this type published within just a few months of the 2008/2009 season • specific subgenre of postmodern fiction • genre: missing link bw. individual text and collective social formations, symbolically encode assumptions of a period “genre is essentially a socio-symbolic message” Frederic Jameson • imitate prevalent genres of the 19th century (the Bildungsroman), or sensation novels, (auto)biographical and (pseudo)historical novels → hybridity of genres • novelistic chains: prequel and sequel, incremental literature • parody and pastiche • “coloniser of genres” Cora Kaplan

  9. capitalising on postcolonialism, postimperialism, feminism • production and consumption of historical knowledge • authorship, production and reception, canonisation • literary continuum:non-judgemental characterisation of these connections • aftering: secondary nature of adaptations Patricia Duncker: “post-Victorian fiction is short of moral and social issues because they have all been solved by now, hence contemporary post-Victorian novels do not have content, they are a mere theatrical backdrop” Jean Rhys:Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Peter Ackroyd:The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), A. S. Byatt:Possession (1990), Alasdair Gray:Poor Things(1992), Emma Tennant: Tess (1993), Peter Carey:Jack Maggs (1997), Beryl Bainbridge:Master Georgie (1998), Patricia Duncker: James Miranda Barry (1999), Matthew Kneale:English Passengers(2000), D. M. Thomas:Charlotte(2000), Jasper Fforde:The Eyre Affair(2001), Colm Tóibín:The Master(2004), Alan Hollinghurst:The Line ofBeauty (2004),The Stranger’s Child (2011), Lloyd Jones:Mister Pip (2006), Ada Foulds: The Quickening Maze (2009)

  10. Topic: • diverse appropriations of Victorian authors, fictional characters, novels, conventions and motifs • Victorian controversies: science, religion, morals, nationhood and identity • plots either take place in the age of the British Empire, • or span both the 19th and the 20th centuries • set at least partly in England, most often in London • or in the countryside Form: • bulky, app. 500 pages • divided into books or chapters, • sometimes preceded by chapter • summaries or epigraphs • narrative voices of 19th-century texts, • first person character narrator or omniscient

  11. The Literary Scene: Authors, Readers, Criticism and the Market • “the return of the author” • biographilia: “a positive and ingenious way of coping with the ‘anxiety of influence” • less experimental and more referential, less text- and more author-based • “meet the author culture” • Disneyfication of the historical author • Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s reinterpretation of Harold Bloom’s notion of the “anxiety of influence” is attributed to male poets, while an “anxiety of authorship” is experienced by female poets

  12. John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) • Victorian pastiche • reaction against sexual revolution of the 60s • Victorian narrative voice: omnipotent, ironic • doubly masculine narrative: unnamed narrator and Charles • digressions, anachronisms, metalepsis • double ending – PM open-endedness • 1981 film starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep

  13. Sarah Waters: Affinity • Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), Fingersmith (2002) • wrote a PhD on lesbian historical fiction • first person narratives • Affinity: Victorian dystopia: prison, home spiritualist’s parlour • makes it hard to distinguish betwen what is disturbing and what is comfortable • Margaret’s father, eminent historian "any piece of history might be made into a tale: it was only a question of deciding where the tale began, and where it ended"

  14. Matthew Kneale: Sweet Thames (1992) • 1849 London cholera epidemic – the imperial disease • E. P. Thompson “history from below” • first person narrative of a sewer engineer, Joshua Jevons metaphors of filth and contagion vs. civic gospel of health, “cleanliness is godliness” • underground Victorian city space vs. sexual and sanitary politics • Allon White “what is socially peripheral is often symbolically central” • Clare Clark: The Great Stink, 1858 and sepoy uprising in India: destabilizing of imperial authority

  15. Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty (2004), The Stranger’s Child (2011) • Lord Alfred Tennyson, “In Memoriam A. H. H.” • Corley Court: late-Victorian country house “ – Ez a ház viktoriánus. — Én is az vagyok, kedvesem.” • the making of (literary) history • http://www.muut.hu/?p=7619

  16. Adam Foulds: The QuickeningMaze (2009) • Victorian mentalasylum • Poetry: John Clare, Septimus Tennyson • Identity • Trans. Tamás Bényei

  17. Thank you for your attention!

  18. Andrea Arnold: Wuthering Heights (2011) "I knew that I wouldn’t nail it either.” the director Adaptation • Chinese box structure of the novel • film: walls of WH and H’s skin as the media of narration opening images: self-metaphors of adaptation → intertextuality and intermediality • pictograms and scars: written on the house / body inscription, wounds • Heathcliff’s gaze and body are directed at the narrative: impossbility of accessing the past • "the story is like a template ", " to distill its essence "AA

  19. Heritage film • "Paradoxnak tűnhet a megállapítás, miszerint a múltat felemlegető alkotások válnak a brit film esetében a XX. század társadalmi változásainak tükrévé." (Váró Kata) • "A keményvonalas kultúrörökség ideológiáját képviselő alkotásokkal szemben a második hullámba az 1990-es évek második felétől készülő ‘revizionista’ vagy ‘poszt-kultúrörökség’ filmek tartoznak, amelyek távolságtartó kritikával kezelik a kultúrörökség film hagyományait." (Reichmann Angelika)

  20. "contemplative, appreciative gaze" (Linda Hutcheon) – not here • not a " bodice-ripper " or a " bonnet drama " • "I did have one rule that there was not to be a single bonnet in the film. I said to the costume designer, if I see a single bonnet you're all going to be sacked." AA "To this day I’ve never read Jane Eyre" - working class background • alienating paratexts: soundtrack, credits Mumford and Sons, "The Enemy"

  21. Landscape – "less is moor" • nature vs. culture → windows and animals "I had a list of words that I gave to my crew for what I wanted the film to look like. The main ones were visceral, animal and raw." AA • mythic, naturalistic • wide shots, extreme close-ups, handheld camera, open air scenes, stills 4:3 ratio: "portrait frame""denies the viewer the widescreen pleasures of the beautiful locales" • non-verbal narration • http://metropolis.org.hu/?pid=16&aid=490

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