Samuel Butler, Victorian Against the Grain : : A Critical Overview / / James G. Paradis.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Paradis, James G.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Victorian satirist, critic, and visual artist, possessed one of the most original and inquiring imaginations of his age. The author of two satires, Erewhon (1872) and The Way of All Flesh (1903), Butler's intellectually adventurous explorations along the cultural frontiers of his time appeared in volume after eccentric volume. Author of four works on evolution, he was one of the most prolific evolutionary speculators of his time. He was an innovative travel writer and art historian who used the creative insights of his own painting, photography, and local knowledge to invent, in works like Alps and Sanctuaries (1881), a vibrant Italian culture that contrasted with the spiritually frigid experience of his High Church upbringing.Despite his range and achievement, there remains surprisingly little contemporary analytical commentary on Butler's work. Samuel Butler, Victorian against the Grain is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that provides a critical overview of Butler's career, one which places his multifaceted body of work within the cultural framework of the Victorian age. The essays, taken together, discuss the formation of Victorian England's ultimate polymath, an artistic and intellectual ventriloquist who assumed an extraordinary range of roles - as satirist, novelist, evolutionist, natural theologian, travel writer, art historian, biographer, classicist, painter, and photographer.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Introduction / Paradis, James G. -- PART ONE: The New Zealand and Early London Years, 1860-73 -- 1. From Canterbury Settlement to Erewhon: Butler and Antipodean Counterpoint / Robinson, Roger -- 2. Butler, Memory, and the Future / Beer, Gillian -- 3. The Ironies of Biblical Criticism: From Samuel Butler's 'Resurrection' Essay and The Fair Haven to Erewhon Revisited / Shaffer, Elinor -- PART TWO: The Evolutionist, 1874-86 -- 4. 'The written symbol extends infinitely': Samuel Butler and the Writing of Evolutionary Theory / Amigoni, David -- 5. 'A Conspiracy of One': Butler, Natural Theology, and Victorian Popularization / Lightman, Bernard -- 6. Evolutionary Psychology and The Way of All Flesh / Shuttleworth, Sally -- 7. Samuel Butler as Late-Victorian Bachelor: Regulating and Representing the Homoerotic / Sussman, Herbert -- 8. Mind Matters: Butler and Late Nineteenth-Century Psychology / Parkin-Gounelas, Ruth -- PART THREE: On the Margin, 1887-1902 -- 9. Samuel Butler, Local Identity, and the Periodizing of Northern Italian Art: The Travel Writer-Painter's View of Art History / Zdanski, Clarice -- 10. Samuel Butler's Photography: Observation and the Dynamic Past / Edwards, Elizabeth -- 11. Butler's Narcissus: 'A Tame Oratorio' / Harris, Ellen T. -- 12. Why Homer Was (Not) a Woman: The Reception of The Authoress of the Odyssey / Beard, Mary -- 13. Butler after Butler: The Man of Letters as Outsider / Paradis, James G. -- Chronology -- Select Bibliography -- Contributors -- Credits -- Index