Chris Roulston – författare

In the eighteenth century, when the definition of marriage was shifting from one based on an hierarchical model to one based on notions of love and mutuality, marital life came under a more intense cultural scrutiny. This led to paradoxical forms of representation of marriage as simultaneously ideal and unlivable. Chris Roulston analyzes how, as representations of married life increased, they challenged the traditional courtship model, offering narratives based on repetition rather than progression. Beginning with English and French marital advice literature, which appropriated novelistic conventions at the same time that it cautioned readers about the dangers of novel reading, she looks at representations of ideal marriages in Pamela II and The New Heloise. Moving on from these ideal domestic spaces, bourgeois marriage is then problematized by the discourse of empire in Sir George Ellison and Letters of Mistress Henley, by troublesome wives in works by Richardson and Samuel de Constant, and by abusive husbands in works by Haywood, Edgeworth, Genlis and Restif de la Bretonne. Finally, the alternative marriage narrative, in which the adultery motif is incorporated into the marriage itself, redefines the function of heteronormativity. In exploring the theoretical issues that arise during this transitional period for married life and the marriage plot, Roulston expands the debates around the evolution of the modern couple.

This is the first edited collection of essays on the nineteenth-century diarist Anne Lister. Now recognized as a UNESCO world heritage document, Lister's five-million-word diaries are paradigm-shifting in terms of their range of material, from social commentary and politics to breath-taking travel accounts. However, they have become most well-known for their explicit descriptions of same-sex practices, written in code and constituting a significant portion of their content. The essays here address the variety and interdisciplinarity of the diaries: Lister's negotiations with her own 'odd' identity, her multiple same-sex relationships, her involvement in politics and her lifelong thirst for knowledge. It also addresses Lister studies in popular culture through the successful Gentleman Jack BBC-HBO series, including an interview with Sally Wainwright and foreword by author Emma Donoghue. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

This is the first edited collection of essays on the nineteenth-century diarist Anne Lister. Now recognized as a UNESCO world heritage document, Lister's five-million-word diaries are paradigm-shifting in terms of their range of material, from social commentary and politics to breath-taking travel accounts. However, they have become most well-known for their explicit descriptions of same-sex practices, written in code and constituting a significant portion of their content. The essays here address the variety and interdisciplinarity of the diaries: Lister's negotiations with her own 'odd' identity, her multiple same-sex relationships, her involvement in politics and her lifelong thirst for knowledge. It also addresses Lister studies in popular culture through the successful Gentleman Jack BBC-HBO series, including an interview with Sally Wainwright and foreword by author Emma Donoghue. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Queer Nostalgia, Colonialism, and the Girls’ Boarding School Novel, 1933-2023 revisits and re-evaluates the girls’ boarding school novel from an intersectional lens. It analyses the role a queer aesthetic has played within the context of the boarding school imaginary in British and postcolonial literatures, and asks why the girls’ boarding school is a place to which authors consistently return.Chris Roulston provides a fresh reading of how this literary subgenre engages with questions of temporality and history in ways that trouble notions of linear progression. Often bridging fiction and memoir, the boarding school narrative is typically part memory work and part social and political critique. Closely aligned with the history of colonialism and achieving its heyday as the British empire reached global domination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the girls’ boarding school contributed to shaping nationalist and imperialist objectives. Drawing on six boarding school novels published between 1933 and 2023, including works from Britain, India, and Australia, this study questions whether queerness and queering within the genre disrupt normative and colonial models, or whether they are in complicit alignment with the privileges the institution protects.For readers interested in queer theory, postcolonial studies, or the enduring cultural significance of boarding schools, this book offers fresh insights into a literary tradition that continues to captivate contemporary audiences.

Queer Nostalgia, Colonialism, and the Girls’ Boarding School Novel, 1933-2023 revisits and re-evaluates the girls’ boarding school novel from an intersectional lens. It analyses the role a queer aesthetic has played within the context of the boarding school imaginary in British and postcolonial literatures, and asks why the girls’ boarding school is a place to which authors consistently return.Chris Roulston provides a fresh reading of how this literary subgenre engages with questions of temporality and history in ways that trouble notions of linear progression. Often bridging fiction and memoir, the boarding school narrative is typically part memory work and part social and political critique. Closely aligned with the history of colonialism and achieving its heyday as the British empire reached global domination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the girls’ boarding school contributed to shaping nationalist and imperialist objectives. Drawing on six boarding school novels published between 1933 and 2023, including works from Britain, India, and Australia, this study questions whether queerness and queering within the genre disrupt normative and colonial models, or whether they are in complicit alignment with the privileges the institution protects.For readers interested in queer theory, postcolonial studies, or the enduring cultural significance of boarding schools, this book offers fresh insights into a literary tradition that continues to captivate contemporary audiences.