U. C. Knoepflmacher - Böcker

As these eleven dark and wild stories demonstrate, fairy tales by Victorian women constitute a distinct literary tradition, one startlingly subversive of the society that fostered it. From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's adaptations of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" to Christina Rossetti's unsettling antifantasies in Speaking Likenesses, these are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. Besides their social and historical implications, they are extraordinary stories, full of strange delights for readers of any age. "Forbidden Journeys is not only a darkly entertaining book to read for the fantasies and anti-fantasies told, but also is a significant contribution to nineteenth-century cultural history, and especially feminist studies."--United Press International

Behind the innocent face of Victorian fairy tales lurks the spectre of a 19th-century debate about the very nature of childhood. This study offers re-readings of Victorian classics, probing deeply into relations between adults, children, and the beloved authors of children's books. The author attempts to show how male and female constructions of childhood in these fairy tales differed radically. Male writers - John Ruskin, William Makepeace Thackeray, George MacDonald, and Lewis Carroll - often displayed an uneasy relation to adult gender roles. By privileging a special girl reader, they attempted to blur sexual differences and sentimentalize an arrested childhood. Female authors, on the other hand - Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti and Juliana Ewing - tried to wrest fairy tales away from the male authors who had appropriated the genre. These women's tales relate fables of growth that are more grounded in actuality than men's, and that often allow their girl characters to mature.

Behind the innocent face of Victorian fairy tales such as Through the Looking Glass or Mopsa the Fairy lurks the specter of an intense gender debate about the very nature of childhood. Offering brilliant rereadings of classics from the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" as well as literature commonly considered "grown-up," U. C. Knoepflmacher illuminates this debate, probing deeply into the relations between adults and children, adults and their own childhood selves, and the lives of beloved Victorian authors and their "children's tales." Ventures into Childland will delight and instruct all readers of children's classics, and will be essential reading for students of Victorian culture and gender studies."Ventures into Childland is acute, well written and stimulating. It also has a political purpose, to insist on the importance of protecting and nurturing children, imaginatively and physically."—Jan Marsh, Times Literary Supplement"A provocative and interesting book about Victorian culture."—Library Journal

MARY SHELLEY's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus grew out of a parlor game and a nightmare vision. The story of the book's origin is a famous one, first told in the introduction Mary Shelley wrote for the 1831 edition of the novel. The two Shelleys, Byron, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori (Byron's physician) spent a "wet, ungenial summer in the Swiss Alps." Byron suggested that "each write a ghost story." If one is to trust Mary Shelley's account (and James Rieger has shown the untrustworthiness of its chronology and particulars), only she and "poor Polidori" took the contest seriously. The two "illustrious poets," according to her, "annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task." Polidori, too, is made to seem careless, unable to handle his story of a "skull-headed lady." Though Mary Shelley is just as deprecating when she speaks of her own "tiresome unlucky ghost story," she also suggests that its sources went deeper. Her truant muse became active as soon as she fastened on the "idea" of "making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream": "'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others."'The twelve essays in this collection attest to the endurance of Mary Shelley's "waking dream." Appropriately, though less romantically, this book also grew out of a playful conversation at a party. When several of the contributors to this book discovered that they were all closet aficionados of Mary Shelley's novel, they decided that a book might be written in which each contributor-contestant might try to account for the persistent hold that Frankenstein continues to exercise on the popular imagination. Within a few months, two films--Warhol's Frankenstein and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein--and the Hall-Landau and Isherwood-Bachardy television versions of the novel appeared to remind us of our blunted purpose. These manifestations were an auspicious sign and resulted in the book Endurance of Frankenstein.

This study shows how George Eliot, a leader in the nineteenth-century intellectual world of Darwin and the Industrial Revolution, wrestled in her early novels with the esthetic problems of reconciling her art and her philosophy. Attempting in her fiction to reproduce the real, temporal world she lived in, George Eliot also tried to reassure herself and her readers that their godless modern world still operated according to higher moral laws of justice and perfectibility. U. C. Knoepflmacher examines here for the first time in sequence George Eliot's development of increasingly sophisticated forms of fiction in her efforts to reconcile the two conflicting orientations in her thought. We see this popular novelist as she progressed artistically from the flawed "Amos Barton" in 1857 up to the balance she achieved in Silas Marner in 1861. And we discover her in the context of her literary antecedents and surrounding in a way that brings many new affiliations to light, particularly the connection of her novels to the writings of Milton, the Romantic poets, and her contemporaries Arnold and Carlyle. Professor Knoepflmacher thoroughly discusses each work in George Eliot's first stage, brining new attention to minor works like "The Lifted Veil" and Scenes of Clerical Life and fresh insights to such well known works as Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

This study shows how George Eliot, a leader in the nineteenth-century intellectual world of Darwin and the Industrial Revolution, wrestled in her early novels with the esthetic problems of reconciling her art and her philosophy. Attempting in her fiction to reproduce the real, temporal world she lived in, George Eliot also tried to reassure herself and her readers that their godless modern world still operated according to higher moral laws of justice and perfectibility. U. C. Knoepflmacher examines here for the first time in sequence George Eliot's development of increasingly sophisticated forms of fiction in her efforts to reconcile the two conflicting orientations in her thought. We see this popular novelist as she progressed artistically from the flawed "Amos Barton" in 1857 up to the balance she achieved in Silas Marner in 1861. And we discover her in the context of her literary antecedents and surrounding in a way that brings many new affiliations to light, particularly the connection of her novels to the writings of Milton, the Romantic poets, and her contemporaries Arnold and Carlyle. Professor Knoepflmacher thoroughly discusses each work in George Eliot's first stage, brining new attention to minor works like "The Lifted Veil" and Scenes of Clerical Life and fresh insights to such well known works as Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Contents: I. Religion, evolution, and the novel; 1. 1888 and a look backwards; 2. George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler: three types of search; II. George Eliot: the search for a religious tradition; 1. George Eliot and science; 2. George Eliot and the "higher criticism"; 3. George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and tradition; III. Middlemarch: the balance of a progress; 1. "Heart" and "mind": two forms of progress; 2. "Modes of religion" (a); 3. Modes of religion" (b); 4. The "metaphysics" of Middlemarch; IV. Daniel Deronda: tradition as synthesis and salvation; 1. Middlemarch and the two "worlds" of Daniel Deronda; 2. Hebraism as nationality; 3. Hebraism as religious belief; V. Walter Pater: the search for a religious atmosphere; 1. Pater's "imaginary portraits"; 2. Pater's "religion of sanity"; VI. The "atmospheres" of Marius the Epicurean; 1. The pilgrimage of Marius (a); 2. The pilgrimage of Marius (b); 3. The Christian death of a pagan; VII. Samuel Butler: the search for a religious crossing; 1. The creation of a faith (1859-1872); 2. The consolidation of a faith (1873-1886); VIII. Reality and Utopia in The way of all flesh; 1. The "past selves" of Ernest Pontifex; 2.The conversion of Ernest Pontifex; 3. The creed of Ernest Pontifex; Appendixes; Index Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents: I. Religion, evolution, and the novel; 1. 1888 and a look backwards; 2. George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler: three types of search; II. George Eliot: the search for a religious tradition; 1. George Eliot and science; 2. George Eliot and the "higher criticism"; 3. George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and tradition; III. Middlemarch: the balance of a progress; 1. "Heart" and "mind": two forms of progress; 2. "Modes of religion" (a); 3. Modes of religion" (b); 4. The "metaphysics" of Middlemarch; IV. Daniel Deronda: tradition as synthesis and salvation; 1. Middlemarch and the two "worlds" of Daniel Deronda; 2. Hebraism as nationality; 3. Hebraism as religious belief; V. Walter Pater: the search for a religious atmosphere; 1. Pater's "imaginary portraits"; 2. Pater's "religion of sanity"; VI. The "atmospheres" of Marius the Epicurean; 1. The pilgrimage of Marius (a); 2. The pilgrimage of Marius (b); 3. The Christian death of a pagan; VII. Samuel Butler: the search for a religious crossing; 1. The creation of a faith (1859-1872); 2. The consolidation of a faith (1873-1886); VIII. Reality and Utopia in The way of all flesh; 1. The "past selves" of Ernest Pontifex; 2.The conversion of Ernest Pontifex; 3. The creed of Ernest Pontifex; Appendixes; Index Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, European society struggled to adapt to numerous challenges to traditional knowledge systems. In response to an increasing confusion of standard forms, Victorian thinkers and writers developed and amplified the concept of "hybridity." Victorian Hybridities shows that writers of the period not only addressed hybridity as a subject but also embodied it through a great variety of blended genres and discursive mixes. With remarkable cohesiveness, the contributors to this volume cover a wide range of Victorian texts-both canonical and lesser known-to consider how the artistic and scientific communities understood and enacted the period's rapidly changing socioeconomic and cultural landscapes. Discussions of everything from climate change and sustainability to race, culture, and politics increasingly rely upon the terms hybrid and hybridity. Examining an early historical manifestation of such discourse refines and directs not only scholarly work in Victorian studies but also these contemporary discussions. Introduced by U. C.Knoepflmacher, the collection includes his personal recommended reading list for those who wish to delve further into this topic. Students and scholars of postcolonial and Victorian literature and culture will welcome the availability of this fine collection.