Synopses & Reviews
"Each century," wrote Charles Dickens "[is] more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries before." Victorians in theory explores the startling conceit that nineteenth-century poetry is amazed by twentieth-century literary theory. In a daring and exciting departure from critical convention, Schad re-reads postructuralist theory through Victorian poetry. Each chapter pairs a poet with a theorist: Robert Browning meets Jacques Derrida; Christina Rossetti encounters Luce Irigaray; Matthew Arnold is after Michel Foucault; Gerald Manley Hopkins dreams with Jacques Lacan; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning haunts Hélène Cixous. Reading both across and between these writers, Schad opens up a radically intertextual space; he wanders, in Matthew Arnold's words, "between two worlds." Across this no-man's land appear a host of unlikely specters, among them T. S. Eliot, Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Carroll's Alice, Walter Benjamin's "angel of history," and the woman taken in adultery. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the Victorians or theory; at once rigorous and readable, it will appeal to both the scholar and the student.
Review
"What is intriguing here is the dialectical back-and-forth intertext which elucidates both the writings of the Victorian writers and the theories of poststructuralist French theoreticians." --Roland A Champagne
Synopsis
This book will fascinate anyone interested in the Victorians or theory. Each chapter pairs a poet with a theorist: Robert Browning meets Jacques Derrida; Christina Rossetti encounters Luce Irigaray; Matthew Arnold is after Michel Foucault; Gerald Manley Hopkins dreams with Jacques Lacan; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning haunts H l ne Cixous.
Synopsis
"Each century," wrote Charles Dickens "[is] more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries before." Victorians in theory explores the startling conceit that nineteenth-century poetry is amazed by twentieth-century literary theory. In a daring and exciting departure from critical convention, Schad re-reads postructuralist theory through Victorian poetry. Each chapter pairs a poet with a theorist: Robert Browning meets Jacques Derrida; Christina Rossetti encounters Luce Irigaray; Matthew Arnold is after Michel Foucault; Gerald Manley Hopkins dreams with Jacques Lacan; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning haunts Hélène Cixous. Reading both across and between these writers, Schad opens up a radically intertextual space; he wanders, in Matthew Arnold's words, "between two worlds." Across this no-man's land appear a host of unlikely specters, among them T. S. Eliot, Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Carroll's Alice, Walter Benjamin's "angel of history," and the woman taken in adultery. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the Victorians or theory; at once rigorous and readable, it will appeal to both the scholar and the student.
About the Author
John Schad is Professor of Modern Literature at Lancaster University.
Table of Contents
Introduction: 'Between two worlds' * 'The lowest room': Christina Rossetti through Irigaray's 'Speculum' other than writing * The buried lives of silence: Foucault after Arnold * A'Dieu; From Browning , from Derrida * Specters of sludge, or Mr Derrida th