Working Fictions: A Genealogy of the Victorian Novel

Carolyn Lesjak

Published by Duke University Press 2006

Working Fictions

A Genealogy of the Victorian Novel

Carolyn Lesjak
Edited by: Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson

In the series Post-Contemporary Interventions

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822388340

Overview
Contents

About this book

Reconceptualizing Victorian literary history, Carolyn Lesjak argues that throughout the Victorian era, fiction reflected a preoccupation with labor in relation to pleasure.

Author / Editor information

Carolyn Lesjak is Associate Professor of English at Swarthmore College.

Reviews

“Working Fictions compellingly reconfigures the literary history of the nineteenth century by exploring the complex ways in which concepts of labor and pleasure informed the realist novel and Victorian aestheticism. This is a rich renewal of Frankfurt School concerns and a powerful contribution to contemporary literary studies.”—Amanda Anderson, author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory

“Working Fictions is a groundbreaking book on Victorian literature and culture. Carolyn Lesjak reads nineteenth-century novels together with the best of social historical and Marxist criticism to reveal how the novel separated labor from pleasure and, in doing so, changed the very definition of both. Hers is an argument whose time has come, one that will enable a new generation of work to be done.”—Nancy Armstrong, author of Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel

“[Lesjak] has without doubt developed sophisticated analytical instruments for making the labor/pleasure problematic visible in a wide range of Victorian fiction, and her book will certainly reinvigorate scholarly attention to this tremendously important topic.”

-- John Kucich Victorian Studies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: A Genealogy of the Labor Novel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Realism Meets the Masses
1. ‘‘How Deep Might Be the Romance’’: RepresentingWork and theWorking Class in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2. A Modern Odyssey: Felix Holt’s Education for the Masses Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
PART II Coming of Age in a World Economy
3. Seeing the Invisible: The Bildungsroman and the Narration of a New Regime of Accumulation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
PART III Itineraries of the Utopian
4.William Morris and a People’s Art: Reimagining the Pleasures of Labor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
5. Utopia, Use, and the Everyday: OscarWilde and a New Economy of Pleasure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 288

eBook

Published: January 18, 2007
ISBN: 9780822388340