Description
The construction of history as a social common denominator is a powerful achievement of the nineteenth-century novel, a form dedicated to experimenting with democratic social practice as it conflicts with economic and feudal visions of social order. Through revisionary readings of familiar nineteenth-century texts The English Novel in History 1840-1895 takes a multidisciplinary approach to literary history. It highlights how narrative shifts from one construction of time to another and reformulates fundamental ideas of identity, nature and society.
Elizabeth Ermarth discusses the range of novels alongside other cultural material, including painting, science, religious, political and economic theory. She explores the problems of how a society, as defined in democratic terms, can accommodate political, gender and class differences without resorting to hierarchy; and how narrowly conceived economic agendas compete with social cohesion.
Students, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists will find this text invaluable.
About the Author
Kate Douglas is an Associate Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University (South Australia). She is the author of Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory (Rutgers, 2010) and the co-author of Life Narratives and Youth Culture: Representation, Agency and Participation (Palgrave, 2016; with Anna Poletti). She is the co-editor (with Laurie McNeill) of Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives (Routledge 2017), (with Kylie Cardell) of Trauma Tales: Auto/biographies of Childhood and Youth (Routledge 2014) and (with Gillian Whitlock) Trauma Texts (Routledge, 2009). Ashley Barnwell is the Ashworth Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on memory, emotion, and family storytelling. Her work has been published in journals such as Life Writing, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Memory Studies, Cultural Sociology, and Emotion, Space & Society. She is currently co-authoring a book (with Joseph Cummins), Reckoning with the Past: Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature, (Routledge 2018).
Reviews
'Invites discussion and is bound to generate fruitful controversy.' - Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses
Book Information
ISBN 9780415015004
Author Elizabeth Ermarth
Format Paperback
Page Count 260
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 340g