London's Underground Spaces: Representing the Victorian City, 1840-1915

Haewon Hwang

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2013

London's Underground Spaces

Representing the Victorian City, 1840-1915

Haewon Hwang

In the series Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748676088

Overview
Contents

About this book

Provides an innovative approach to articulate what ‘underground’ meant to the Victorians

The construction of London’s underground sewers, underground railway and suburban cemeteries created seismic shifts in the geography and the psychological apprehension of the city. Yet, why are there so few literary and aesthetic interventions in Victorian representations of subterranean spaces? What is London’s answer to the Parisian sewers of Victor Hugo or the unflinching realism of Émile Zola’s underworld? Where is the great English underground novel? This study explores this elision not as an absence of imaginative output, but as a presence and plenitude of anxiety and fears that haunt the pages of Charles Dickens, George Gissing, Bram Stoker and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The way in which these writers negotiated the dirt and messiness of underground spaces reveals both the emergence of Gothic, socialist, and modernist sensibilities, and the way all modern cities deal with what is unseen, intangible and inarticulable. The inclusion of illustrations of Victorian maps, cartoons, photographs and art bring the period to life.

Key Features:

An interdisciplinary study that explores Victorian maps, guidebooks, cartoons and advertisements, alongside literature, journals, photographs and art to bring the period to life
Draws on modern critical frameworks of Derrida, Lefebvre, and Kristeva to recover and to conceptualize the lost spaces of the Victorian city
Redefines ‘underground’ beyond its spatial usage to look at the emergence of underground revolutionary movements in fin-de-siècle London
Argues for the distinctiveness of London’s underground culture and its influence on other global cities

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Series Editor’s Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Incontinent City: Sewers, Disgust and Liminality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. Tubing It: Speeding Through Modernity in the London Underground Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
3. The (Un)Buried Life: Death in the Modern Necropolis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
4. Underground Revolutions: Invisible Networks of Terror in Fin-de-Siècle London Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Other: 18 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: July 12, 2013
ISBN: 9780748676088