The final decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first witnessed a surge of published novels with direct and indirect connection to the Victorian era, at a time when a focus on the new millenium might have been expected. This proliferation of what came to be termed 'neo-Victorian novels' shows no sign of abating and has now given rise to scholarly research on the subject. The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the rise of the neo-Victorian novel during the period in question. After an introduction which situates the phenomenon within relevant theoretical and cultural contexts, the following chapter attempts to provide a sense of the thematic range of neo-Victorian novels through an original 'catalogue' of more than one hundred neo-Victorian novels, adopting the received neo-Victorian theoretical stance which believes that what neo-Victorian novels write about demonstrates contemporary concerns and contemporary attitudes to the Victorian as much as it attempts an accurate portrayal of a historical period. This is followed by three further chapters which focus on different structural forms in presenting 'Victorian' material: the pastiche, the split narrative and the re-write versions of the neo-Victorian novel. A core contention of the thesis is that the comparison of three different novel forms, allied to the examination of thematic areas of interest, exposes the contradictory impulse which lies at the heart of the neo-Victorian enterprise. While the continuing popularity of neo-Victorian fictions indicates a desire for a sense of continuing connection to Victorian forbears, imagined or actual, the insistence on plots which play to modern interests and sensibilities suggests that the Victorians have to 'fit' with us rather than the other way round. The various forms that the neo-Victorian novel adopts carry their own postmodern means of undermining the credibility of the Victorian world under construction.

In this essay, the concept of gender equality is explored in terms of progressive heroines in neo-Victorian literature. In order to elucidate in what way a progression has been made, the comparative analysis is predicated upon second wave feminism. A description of the Victorian heroine is made in order to decide if the neo-Victorian heroine has progressed in relation to gender equality. Jane Eyre is explored extensively in order to expand on how a strong heroine can be defined. Elizabeth Steele will represent the neo-Victorian heroine from the novel Blood in the Skies (2011). Her characteristics are defined as being more in likeness with male features, and this would imply that neo-Victorian authors aim at reinventing the Victorian literature in order to adhere to the second wave feminist equality and ”sameness” ideal. The Steampunk/neo-Victorian work Blood in the Skies features a heroine who is portrayed as a strong and independent woman corresponding to the feminist definition of progression in terms of gender equality, in contrast to the typical female protagonist found in Victorian fiction. The results show that Elizabeth can be defined as a strong and independent woman, which corresponds with the feminist definition of gender equality. Heroines in neo- Victorian literature seem to have the same opportunities as men have, and this is shown by the freedom of choice exerted by Elizabeth in the novel.

Through a study of Twilight literary texts, fangirls' online discourse, and cinematic adaptations, I theorize the rhetorical dimensions of "neo-Victorian melodrama," a pervasive mode of discourse in girl culture. These rhetorical functions include the validation of girls' emotional lives, especially affective responses to coming-of-age experiences. Through the confessional revelation of interiority, neo-Victorian melodrama promotes empathy and intimacy among girls and functions to critique restrictive constructions of contemporary girlhood, which has inherited Victorian discourses related to female youth. Theorizing these rhetorical dimensions helps advance an appreciation for girls' rhetorical activities and their cultural preferences. These preferences have often been derided by ageist and sexist critiques of Twilight, a phenomenon initiated by Stephenie Meyer's young adult vampire romance. In order to determine the rhetorical dimensions of neo-Victorian melodrama in girl culture, I use generic rhetorical criticism. Specifically, Meyer's Twilight Saga appeals to contemporary girls through melodramatic moments shared with Charlotte Brontë's nineteenth-century Jane Eyre. Fangirls' online discourse certifies this appeal while also demonstrating how melodrama qualifies girls' own speech practices. Thus, generic criticism is complemented by ethnographic approaches to fandom. In addition, a focus on narrating voiceover, a sound convention with a legacy in girls' media, helps make sense of the Twilight cinematic adaptations' translation of neo-Victorian melodrama from page to screen. The rhetorical dimensions of neo-Victorian melodrama in girl culture are consistent with previous feminist theoretical insights related to the revelation of affect, intimacy, and personal experience for the purpose of community building. While feminist rhetoricians have addressed women's rhetorical practices, they have not theorized girls to the same extent, nor have they used generic criticism to account for melodrama's redemptive or progressive potential. Likewise, while scholars of literature, film, and media studies have advanced an appreciation for women's preferences for melodrama, these feminist scholars generally have not treated girls' preferences for the melodramatic mode. And while feminist critics in girls' studies have theorized girls' productive cultural contributions, as well as their complex reading and viewing strategies, such scholarship has not accounted for girls' preferences for melodrama. My study at once builds on and remedies the gaps in this theoretical foundation. / text

<p>Predmet istraţivanja ove doktorske disertacije jesu metafore tela i prostora u stvarala&scaron;tvu savremene vel&scaron;ke spisateljice Sare Voters. Istraţivanje se usredsreĊuje na prvih pet romana iz njenog opusa, objavljenih u periodu od 1998. do 2009. godine. Romani Usne od somota, Srodne du&scaron;e i Dţeparo&scaron; spadaju u neoviktorijansku prozu, dok su romani Noćna straţa i Mali stranac sme&scaron;teni u period za vreme i nakon Drugog svetskog rata. Uloga protagoniste u njenim romanima najĉe&scaron;će se dodeljuje lezbejskim likovima, pa se njeno stvarala&scaron;tvo moţe shvatiti kao poku&scaron;aj da se navedene istorijske epohe rekonstrui&scaron;u tako da se omogući predstavljanje lezbejskih likova i lezbejske seksualnosti. Istovremeno, njeni romani doprinose &scaron;irem predstavljanju lezbejske tematike u savremenoj knjiţevnoj produkciji. Osnovni cilj istraţivanja jeste da se ispita uloga telesnih i prostornih metafora u obradi teme istopolne ljubavi, ali i znaĉaj ovih metafora za ĉitav niz drugih tema.<br />Istraţivanja tela i prostora predstavljaju izuzetno plodnu i dinamiĉnu oblast savremene kritiĉke teorije. Ovi pojmovi dospevaju u ţiţu kritiĉkog interesovanja u drugoj polovini dvadesetog veka, mada je njihovo prisustvo u oblastima nauĉnih istraţivanja znatno duţe, pa rasprave o telu i telesnosti nalazimo jo&scaron; u klasiĉnoj filozofiji. Prostor je pak sve do druge polovine dvadesetog veka prevashodno bio predmet matematiĉkih i geografskih istraţivanja, dok je u humanistiĉkoj tradiciji bio shvaćen tek kao pasivna i statiĉna pozadina istorijskih dogaĊaja. Istraţivanje polazi od istorijskog pregleda kljuĉnih teorijskih pristupa telu, poĉev od platonistiĉke dualistiĉke tradicije,&nbsp;preko kartezijanskog dualizma, sve do savremenih poststrukturalistiĉkih teorija, a teorijsko upori&scaron;te analize telesnih metafora ĉine teorije Mi&scaron;ela Fukoa i Dţudit Batler. Analiza romana se usredsreĊuje na motiv transodevanja, metaforu duha, ali i na skup konkretnih telesnih slika kojima se spisateljica iznova vraća. Potom se razmatraju savremena teorijska poimanja prostora, pri ĉemu se istraţivanje oslanja i na relevantna istorijska, knjiţevnoistorijska i sociolo&scaron;ka istraţivanja. Ovaj teorijski okvir sluţi da se ispitaju predstave kuće, zatvora, ludnice i britanske prestonice, te interakcija lezbejskih likova s ovim lokalitetima<br />&nbsp;</p> / <p>The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore the corporeal and spatial metaphors in the fiction of Sarah Waters, a contemporary Welsh novelist. The critical focus of the thesis is on Waters‟s first five novels, published between 1998 and 2009. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith belong to the neo-Victorian genre, while Night Watch and The Little Stranger are set in the period during and after the Second World War. In Waters‟s fiction, the role of protagonist is mostly reserved for lesbian characters and her oeuvre can be perceived as an attempt to rewrite the chosen historical periods in ways which provide for the representation of lesbian characters and lesbian sexuality. In addition, her novels make a significant contribution towards wider literary representation of lesbian issues in the contemporary context. The main goal of this research is to analyze the role of corporeal and spatial metaphors in the portrayal of same-sex relationships, class tensions and other relevant themes in Waters‟s work.<br />The issues of body and space are undoubtedly at the centre of contemporary critical interest and theoretical debates that surround them are diverse and wide-ranging. However, while the history of theoretical interest in the body dates back to the classical tradition, spatiality only came to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century, when a surge of critical interest can be observed marking the beginning of the so-called spatial turn. The thesis therefore&nbsp;starts by providing a brief historical overview of the key theoretical approaches to the body, including the mind/body debate in the classical Platonic tradition, Cartesian dualism and contemporary poststructuralist theory. The theories of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler are then used as the main theoretical framework for the analysis of corporeal metaphors, which focuses on the motif of cross-dressing, the spectral metaphor, as well as a range of recurrent corporeal images in Waters‟s writing. In the following chapters, the focus shifts to contemporary theoretical approaches to spatiality and relevant sociological, cultural and historical research, which are used to explore the representations of home, prison, asylum and urban space, as well as the interaction between the lesbian protagonists and their surroundings.</p>

Neo-Victorian studies is a burgeoning subfield which seeks to examine contemporary representations of the Victorian period. For the last decade, neo-Victorian scholars have offered up definitions of what makes a text “neo-Victorian”; often, this has been via a description of what the neo-Victorian is not. The ‘ruling’ definition—i.e., the definition most consistently repeated—hails from the introduction to Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century by Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn: “the Neo-Victorian is more than historical fiction set in the nineteenth century. […] texts (literary, filmic, audio/visual) must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (4). This short delineation significantly comes at the expense of historical fiction, which is a move repeated throughout neo-Victorian efforts to define itself. Neo-Victorian studies has largely concerned itself with literary novels, operating with a heavy anxiety that ‘other’ fiction set in the nineteenth century is escapist and nostalgic in the sense that it simply perpetuates problematic past systems of oppression while evoking the fashionable aesthetic trappings of the Victorian. My dissertation argues that contemporary genre fiction, long derided as ‘simply’ escapist in nature, can also be neo-Victorian. In each of my chapters I analyze texts from a specific genre—steampunk, popular romance, detective fiction, and Sherlock Holmes pastiche—in order to offer a basis for investigating genre fiction with a neo-Victorian lens. I analyze the depiction of corsets and feminist protagonists in three steampunk novels, explore the exhibition of unlikely romantic heroines and Romany romantic heroes in Lisa Kleypas’ historical romance series about the Hathaway family, examine representations of class and gender as well as germane social issues in Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series, and highlight the feminist potential of Carole Nelson Douglas’ series of Sherlock Holmes pastiche featuring Irene Adler. Each chapter considers the Victorian period as represented alongside Victorian novels and literary periodicals in order to demonstrate the shape of these neo-Victorian revisions and make the case the genre fiction can be self-conscious despite its lack of metafictional content.

This dissertation offers critical and theoretical approaches for understanding depictions of Spiritualism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian fiction. Spiritualism has fascinated and repelled writers since the movement's inception in Hydesville, New York, in 1848, and continues to haunt writers even today. The conclusion of this dissertation follows Spiritualist fiction as it carries over into the Neo-Victorian genre, by discussing how themes and images of Victorian Spiritualism find "life after death" in contemporary work. Spiritualism, once confined to the realm of the arcane and academically obscure, has begun to attract critical attention as more scholars exhume the body of literature left behind by the Spiritualist movement. This new critical attention has focused on Spiritualism's important relationship with various elements of Victorian culture, particularly its close affiliation with reform movements such as Women's Rights. The changes that occurred in Spiritualist fiction reflect broader shifts in nineteenth-century culture. Over time, literary depictions of Spiritualism became increasingly detached from Spiritualism's original connection with progressive reform. This dissertation argues that a close examination of the trajectory of Spiritualist fiction mirrors broader shifts occurring in Victorian society. An analysis of Spiritualist fiction, from its inception to its final incarnation, offers a new critical perspective for understanding how themes that initially surfaced in progressive midcentury fiction later reemerged--in much different forms--in Gothic fiction of the fin-de-siécle. From this, we can observe how these late Gothic images were later recycled in Neo-Victorian adaptations. In tracing the course of literary depictions of Spiritualism, this analysis ranges from novels written by committed advocates of Spiritualism, such as Florence Marryat's The Dead Man's Message and Elizabeth Phelps's The Gates Ajar, to representations of Spiritualism written in fin-de-siécle Gothic style, including Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. My analysis also includes the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who conceived of Spiritualism as either "the birth of a new science or the revival of an old humbug." Hawthorne's ambivalence represents an important and heretofore completely overlooked aspect of Spiritualist literature. He is poised between the extremes of proselytizing Spiritualists and fin-de-siécle skeptics. Hawthorne wanted to believe in Spiritualism but remained unconvinced. As the century wore on, this brand of skepticism became increasingly common, and the decline of Spiritualism's popularity was hastened by the repudiation of the movement by its founders, the Fox Sisters, in 1888. Ultimately, despite numerous attempts both scientific and metaphysical, the Victorian frame of mind proved unable to successfully reconcile the mystical element of Spiritualism with the increasingly mechanistic materialist worldview emerging as a result of rapid scientific advances and industrialization. The decline and fall of the Spiritualist movement opened the door to the appropriation of Spiritualism as a Gothic literary trope in decadent literature. This late period of Spiritualist fiction cast a long shadow that subsequently led to multiple literary reincarnations of Spiritualism in the Gothic Neo-Victorian vein. Above all, Spiritualist literature is permeated by the theme of loss. In each of the literary epochs covered in this dissertation, Spiritualism is connected with loss or deficit of some variety. Convinced Spiritualist writers depicted Spiritualism as an improved form of consolation for the bereaved, but later writers, particularly those working after the collapse of the Spiritualist movement, perceived Spiritualism as a dangerous form of delusion that could lead to the loss of sanity and self. Fundamentally, Spiritualism was a Victorian attempt to address the existential dilemma of continuing to live in a world where joy is fleeting and the journey of life has but a single inexorable terminus. Writers like Phelps and Marryat admired Spiritualism as it promised immediate and unbroken communion with the beloved dead. The dead and the living existed together perpetually. Thus, the bereaved party had no incentive to progress through normative cycles of grief and mourning, as there was no genuine separation between the living and the dead. In the words of one of Marryat's own works of Spiritualist propaganda, there is no death.

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Au croisement de la fantasy, ce genre de l’imaginaire qui a reçu ses lettres de noblesse avec J.R.R. Tolkien et jouit aujourd’hui d’une immense popularité, et des romans néo-victoriens, ces réécritures contemporaines du canon historique et littéraire du XIXe siècle apparues dans les années 1960, la fantasy néo-victorienne exhibe ses dragons à vapeur. Tributaire de différents genres et sous-genres, il s’agit d’une littérature paradoxale, prise entre progrès et regret, spéculation et nostalgie. Le contexte victorien renvoie la fantasy à sa première naissance dans les années 1890, et plus largement à l’émergence de la paralittérature et des littératures de l’imaginaire (roman policier, fantastique, horreur, science-fiction), héritières du roman gothique du XVIIIe siècle. Il est nécessaire de décrypter l’arbre généalogique de l’imaginaire pour comprendre les genres hybrides contemporains, tels que la fantasy urbaine et le steampunk, qui représentent à eux deux une partie majeure de la fantasy néo-victorienne. Cette dimension génétique est mise au service d’une poétique autant que d’une politique : il importe justement de définir la valeur du préfixe néo- et de distinguer les moments où le néo-victorianisme penche vers le néo-conservatisme. Quel engagement pour la fantasy néo-victorienne, cette littérature du présent qui interroge et transforme le passé victorien ? Des voyages à dos de dragon à l’héritage de l’Empire britannique, des bas-fonds de Londres aux mondes parallèles de l’uchronie, des zombies aux fanfictions, la recherche d’une poétique nous amène à problématiser l’importance de la fiction dans notre vision du monde. / Fantasy became an official genre of speculative fiction with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, while the neo-Victorian novel emerged in the 1960s as a contemporary rewriting of the historical and literary canon of the nineteenth century: where the two meet, the steam dragons of neo-Victorian fantasy take flight. At the crossroads of several genres and sub-genres, it is a literature of paradoxes, caught between progress and regret, speculation and nostalgia. The Victorian era was the setting of fantasy’s first birth in the 1890s, and it also witnessed the appearance of several types of genre fiction and speculative fiction (the detective novel, the fantastic, horror and science-fiction) which grew out of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel. The family tree of speculative fiction needs to be laid out if one is to understand hybrid contemporary genres like urban fantasy and steampunk, which comprise most of neo-Victorian fantasy. The taxonomy itself serves to explore the poetical and political dimension: we strive to define the precise meaning of the prefix neo- and distinguish the moments when the neo-Victorian becomes neo-Conservative. What kind of commitment does neo-Victorian fantasy enact, as a type of literature anchored in the present, which interrogates and transforms the Victorian past? From travels on dragonback to the inheritance of the British Empire, from the depths of London to the parallel worlds of alternative history, from zombies to fanfictions, the search for a poetics leads us question the impact that fiction has on our worldview.

This thesis examines the novels of Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt in order to question the extent to which contemporary British novelists are free to innovate with the forms of literary realism, forms that have a long and valued tradition in British literary production. Both authors, I argue, have reassessed the limits of the realist novel over the course of their careers, and the specific ways in which they engage with, or depart from, their literary inheritance are discussed. The introduction contextualises the literary climate out of which the two writers emerge. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was a commonplace of literary criticism to declare the “death of the English novel.” In the years following modernist experimentation, British novelists made a conscious return to the mimetic realism of the nineteenth century. Rather than the intellectual sterility that is often assumed to have dominated this period, I observe that there were in fact many writers who were continuing the innovations of the preceding generations, Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt amongst them. To view realism to be in need of renewal is first of all to view literary production in terms of an ontological-historical distinction of texts as types of objects. It may be also to neglect the ways in which literary history is always already in dialogue with the present. Both authors have made concerted efforts to refresh literary realism; however, they have proceeded in very different ways. Brooke-Rose has experimented with the content and the form of the novel in order to renew conventions she insists are fatigued or overworked. The novels she has published since 1964 depart radically from what would ordinarily be recognised as realist fictions as they make no attempt to disguise their own textuality. Byatt, on the other hand, has reassessed realism through the forms of realism itself. Through an engagement with literary history, she revisits realism to pursue what has always been of value within it. In so doing, she creates a developmental model of literary production in which literary debts are made visible in the work of the contemporary writer. Chapter One examines Thru, the literary experiment for which Brooke-Rose is most celebrated. My starting point is her claim, following Roland Barthes’s S/Z, that she is the author of writerly as opposed to readerly texts. I argue that to establish any such easy opposition is to neglect Barthes’s departure from the polemicism that had marked his earlier work. Rather than interrogating how well her texts are supported by her claim to be writerly, I turn the opposition around in order to examine precisely how Barthes’s readerly operates within Thru. Through a close reading both of the novel and of Barthes, I illustrate that many characteristics of literary realism that Brooke-Rose argues are exhausted, in particular characterisation and narration, are still operating in Thru. Chapter Two develops Brooke-Rose’s opposition of readerly and writerly in order to examine its consequence for her own experimental writing. Here I return to Thru to demonstrate the ways in which Barthes’s readerly and writerly operate as interdependent processes rather than as opposing terms. I then reconsider her earliest work, a period she has since disavowed. I argue that rather than a separation, there is a continuum between her earliest works and her later, more experimental, writing that has not been recognised by the author or her critics. In Chapter Three I turn my attention to Byatt’s insistence on a developmental model of literary production. Here I identify the role that evolutionary narratives play in her texts. Two of her works, Possession and “Morpho Eugenia” are set largely in 1859, a year in which a specific epistemological emergence was to reconsider genealogical relations. In this chapter I examine the writings she invents for her characters and argue that she takes metaphors from natural history in order, not only to show the close relationship between literature and natural history, but to provide her reader with a framework of literary-generational descent. Chapter Four examines more closely the ways in which Byatt converses with her literary predecessors. She offers a version of realism that has always been concerned with perception, and with the impossibility of translating that perception into verisimilar fiction. In this chapter I identify the role that art works play within two of Byatt’s earlier novels, The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, as she finds in them the same metaphorical ambiguities that bind the language of the novelist to imprecision. I then examine the ways in which metaphor works in these novels to elude precise signification of meaning. Chapter Five returns to Byatt’s neo-Victorian texts, Possession and Angels and Insects, and examines the author’s ventriloquism of her Victorian characters, which includes Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. Ventriloquism, I argue, is concerned with a remembrance of the literary dead within the present work and is thus an expression of mourning. However, to avoid melancholia the new text must also emphasise its difference from that which is being ventriloquised. I then discuss Byatt’s focus on nineteenth-century spiritualism, as it is through the trope of the séance that she reconsiders the afterlife of literary history itself. The final chapter examines the role of the critic. The mourning of Byatt’s fictionalised Tennyson is singular and overpowering. Chapter Six begins with a consideration of two of Possession’s critics, Mortimer Cropper and Leonora Stern, whose readings, I argue, are similar to Tennyson’s mourning in their inhospitality to other readings, other mournings of the literary text. I compare Cropper and Stern to Possession’s other critics, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, whom Byatt places in the role of literary heir. Not only do Roland and Maud display an essential respect for the texts that they study, but also their reading is open to revision. The literary text, as Barthes argues, must always keep in reserve some essential meaning. Only through interpretive revision, Byatt implies, is the promise of this hopeful-yet-impossible revelation made to the reader.