Synopses & Reviews
This book is about a group of Victorian British writers and artists whose work emerges from recollection and whose texts embody the experience of nostalgia. The study concentrates on the longing for a past that traverses the span of these writers' and artists' own lifetimes. It examines their particular experience of the nostalgic moment and provides an occasion to reexamine the idea of nostalgia and to reflect on the act of recollection.
Review
This is a fine work: insightful, novel, and elegantly written.
Choice
Synopsis
List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: VOYAGES AND EXILE Nostalgia and the Voyage of the Beagle The Last of England and the Representation of Longing R.L. Stevenson's Nationalism and the Dualities of Exile The 'Shaking, Uncertain Ground' of Elizabeth Gaskell's Narratives PART II: CHILDHOOD SPACES The Landscape of A Child's Garden of Verses Rooms without Mirrors: The Childhood Interiors of Ruskin, Pater, and Stevenson PART III: THE IDEA OF RECOLLECTION R.L. Stevenson and the Idea of Recollection From the Vignette to the Rectangular: Bergson, Turner, and Remembrance Afterthoughts: Nostalgia Endnotes Index
Synopsis
This book is about a group of Victorian British writers and artists (Darwin, Stevenson, Gaskell, Ruskin, Pater, Brown and Turner) whose work emerges from recollection and whose texts embody the experience of nostalgia. The study concentrates on the longing for a past that traverses the span of these writers' and artists' own lifetime. It examines their particular experience of the nostalgic moment and provides an occasion to re-examine the idea of nostalgia and to reflect on the act of recollection.
About the Author
Ann C. Colley is Professor of English at the State University College of New York at Buffalo.
Table of Contents
Introduction *
Part I: Voyages and Exile * Nostalgia and the Voyage of the Beagle *
The Last of England and the Representation of Longing * R. L. Stevenson's Nationalism and the Dualities of Exile * The "shaking uncertain ground" of Elizabeth Gaskell's Narratives *
Part II: Childhood Spaces * The Landscape of
A Child's Garden of Verses * Rooms Without Mirrors: The Childhood Interiors of Ruskin, Pater and Stevenson *
Part III: The Idea of Recollection * R. L. Stevenson and the Idea of Recollection * From the Vignette to the Rectangular: Bergson, Turner, and Remembrance * Afterthoughts: Nostalgia and Recollection * Index