Victorian Antipathies
Negative Feelings in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
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Beschreibung
"Scholars have long studied the role of sympathy in nineteenth-century culture, but now the negative emotions—resentment, hatred, contempt, repugnance—are getting their due. Anja Hartl and Nina Engelhardt’s dossier of Victorian Antipathies overflows with malevolence and scorn, though the volume is a pleasure to read. The individual chapters are erudite, varied, and original, and the editors’ methodologically innovative introduction is sure to change our understanding of the centrality of negative feeling to British imperial culture."
—Zach Samalin, New York University, USA
This book identifies antipathy as an emotion of key concern in Victorian literature and culture by studying discourses and representations of antipathy in fictional and non-fictional texts. The selected texts cover a broad range of thematic concerns and cultural contexts, engaging with different facets, manifestations, and functions of antipathy, and demonstrating its historically specific meanings in nineteenth-century British and imperial literature and culture. The contributors demonstrate how antipathy was presented as an emotional experience, discursive strategy, and aesthetic device that expressed, shaped, and interrogated Victorian power relations, and how it was used to negotiate structural dynamics of gender, class, and race. Bringing the study of Victorian literature and culture into conversation with approaches in the history of emotions, the volume explores the potential for considering historical conceptualisations of antipathetic feelings in and through literature, and offers methodological insights into the uses of literature in the history of emotions.
Nina Engelhardt is Professor of English Literature at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
Anja Hartl is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
This book identifies antipathy as an emotion of key concern in Victorian literature and culture by studying discourses and representations of antipathy in fictional and non-fictional texts. The selected texts cover a broad range of thematic concerns and cultural contexts, engaging with different facets, manifestations, and functions of antipathy, and demonstrating its historically specific meanings in nineteenth-century British and imperial literature and culture. The contributors demonstrate how antipathy was presented as an emotional experience, discursive strategy, and aesthetic device that expressed, shaped, and interrogated Victorian power relations, and how it was used to negotiate structural dynamics of gender, class, and race. Bringing the study of Victorian literature and culture into conversation with approaches in the history of emotions, the volume explores the potential for considering historical conceptualisations of antipathetic feelings in and through literature, and offers methodological insights into the uses of literature in the history of emotions.
Contributes to the surge of interest in research on (negative) feelings in literary and cultural studies Introduces antipathy as a key category in Victorian Studies to reassess the emotional landscape of that era Covers a wide range of topics, genres, contexts, and texts, and canonical as well as non-canonical authors
Autor*in
Nina Engelhardt
Themen in »Victorian Antipathies«
history of emotions history of experience Victorian literature Victorian culture sympathy
Stimmen zu »Victorian Antipathies«
“This innovative collection presents fresh ways to understand the complexity of feeling in the Victorian period, moving away from now familiar arguments about sympathy and empathy. The wide-ranging chapters persuasively show how antipathy – associated with dissimilarity, rejection, irrationality, even violence – impacted social and political thought, especially in relation to racism and colonialism. Victorian Antipathies should be required reading for scholars in Victorian studies and the history of emotions!” (Tara MacDonald, University of Lethbridge, Canada)
“Scholars have long studied the role of sympathy in nineteenth-century culture, but now the negative emotions—resentment, hatred, contempt, repugnance—are getting their due. Anja Hartl and Nina Engelhardt’s dossier of Victorian antipathies overflows with malevolence and scorn, though the volume is a pleasure to read. The individual chapters are erudite, varied, and original, and the editors’ methodologically innovative introduction is sure to change our understanding of the centrality of negative feeling to British imperial culture.” (Zach Samalin, New York University, USA)
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