Victorian Literature

How were the genres of literature changed by new methods of serialization and publishing? How did a widespread culture of performance emerge in the period to shape as well as to be shaped by the novel and poetry? David Amigoni draws on the most recent critical approaches to the novel, Victorian melodrama and poetry to answer these and other questions. The work of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Carlyle and Mathew Arnold are explored in relation to ideas about fiction, journalism, drama, poetry, the New Woman, gothic, horror and the Victorian sage. Key Features *Detailed readings of key texts provide models of how to read critically *Demonstrates the interaction between genres to help think through modes of artistic experimentation and innovation in the period *Examines Neo-Victorian fiction, a popular genre today *Student resources include electronic and reference sources, further reading and an extensive glossary of key critical terms and historical issues

David Amigoni is Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University. He is the author of The English Novel and Prose Narrative (Edinburgh University Press, 2000) and Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992). He is co-editor, with Jeff Wallace, of Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species': New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester UP, 1995), and co-editor, with Paul Barlow and Colin Trodd, of Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque (Ashgate, 1999).