Knowing the Past : : Victorian Literature and Culture / / ed. by Suzy Anger.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Backlist 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Anger, Suzy,; Beer, Gillian,; Bodenheimer, Rosemarie,; Herbert, Christopher,; Joseph, Gerhard,; Levine, George,; Loesberg, Jonathan,; Poovey, Mary,; Robbins, Bruce,; Sabin, Margery,; Stoddart, Judith,; Tucker, Herbert F.,; Williams, Carolyn,
• HerausgeberIn: Anger, Suzy,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 p.) :; 2 charts/maps, 2 halftones

To what extent is it possible to know the past or to know other cultures? Can one describe the past without imposing one's own cultural, political, social, or personal preconceptions? Testing the current skepticism that insists that it is impossible not to read one's own moment onto other times and cultures, the essays in this collection use the Victorian era as a means of developing a theory and critique of historical reclamation.In Knowing the Past, a distinguished group of Victorian scholars reflect on the Victorian past and examine the Victorians' own sophisticated contributions to debates about historical and cultural knowledge. Confronting, confirming, and opposing the skeptics, the essays provide close readings of particular texts. They encompass the larger constellation of ideas and questions that went into the making of the texts while participating in larger theoretical debates about knowledge of the past and other cultures.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Knowing the Victorians -- I. Theorizing The Victorians -- I. Text vs. Hypertext: Seeing the Victorian Object As in Itself It Really Is -- 2. The Golden Bough and the Unknowable -- 3. Daniel Deronda: A New Epistemology -- II. Victorians Theorizing -- 4. Walter Pater's Impressionism and the Form of Historical Revival -- 5. Arnold and the Authorization of Criticism -- 6. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Unreadable Acts in George Eliot -- III. Continuities -- 7. The Structure Of Anxiety In Political Economy And Hard Times -- 8. How To Be A Benefactor Without Any Money: The Chill Of Welfare In Great Expectations -- 9. Tracking The Sentimental Eye -- IV. Victorian Meanings -- 10. Knowing and Telling in Dickens's Retrospects -- 11. Inside the Shark's Mouth: William Lovett's Struggle for Political Language -- 12. Knowing a Life: Edith Simcox-Sat est vixisse? -- Notes on Contributors -- Index