No description available.

No description available.

The implication of belief, that association between the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale—an association resulting from the onslaught of reason and science, and consequently spiritual doubt—remains largely responsible for the fictional ghost tale’s critical demise. A rise in the spiritualist movement produces a specific literature that coincides with the rise in interest in its fictional counterpart. Both the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale reach their heights in popularity at precisely the same time; not coincidental, but well planned by talented writers who viewed the preoccupation with ghosts as a platform from which a variety of contemporary issues could be candidly dealt. The Victorian literary ghost figure simultaneously, and ingeniously, fills a spiritual void, satisfies a consumer need for entertainment, and provides an opportunity for cultural commentary. The voice of the Victorian ghost, and the subsequent understanding of its haunted are of distinct cultural significance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northwestern University, 1982. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 701-730).

This is the first comprehensive study of the Brontës' representations of masculinity. In it, I analyse the ways this family of writers depicted forms of masculinity as they developed from late-Romantic child writers to mature novelists and poets of the Victorian period. My chief concern is to situate the Brontës within the historical period of 1829-1855, from Charlotte's first Glass Town stories to the time of her death. This thesis examines the Brontë siblings' complete body of work, including Branwell's contributions to the Angrian saga, Emily's and Anne's Gondal poetry, and Charlotte's and Emily's Belgian devoirs. In undertaking this work, I model my approach on Heather Glen's precise, historical readings in Charlotte Brontë: The Imagination in History (2002), as well as John Tosh's social historical examination of Victorian masculinity, particularly in A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home (1999). This study examines representations of masculinity in the modes of cultural production the Brontës were exposed to: contemporary periodicals, poetry, fiction, domestic handbooks, gift books, educational texts, clerical and medical handbooks, and labour management treatises. I track the Brontës' various engagements with and revisions of Byronic and Carlylean forms of masculinity, as well as the rise and fall of the silver fork dandy and the emergence of both the Victorian self-made man and the new professional. This study considers how the Brontës' representations of gender formation were affected by different modes of familial literary production and collaboration. Though the Brontës shared their creative works from a young age and grew up within the same domestic literary culture, the siblings' depictions of masculinity diverge, and each sister situates herself within various cultural contexts relating, for example, to child-rearing, romance, and professional conduct. My thesis is organised thematically, with chapters examining heroic, domestic, and professional representations of masculinity in the Brontës' works.

In mid-to-late Victorian fiction, pollution and waste drip, ooze, and seep through the built environment, threatening the boundaries between public and private, rich and poor, healthy and ill. Refuse and dirt held a paradoxical place in nineteenth-century society, as matter that was economically valuable, yet had the capacity to contaminate. My dissertation moves from this tension to ask three questions: What roles did dirt and waste play in critiques of capitalism? How did industrial and organic pollution shape the way that the Victorians imagined the natural world in the latter half of the nineteenth century? And how did changing views of the environment transform what constituted a “natural” social order? The project focuses on four Victorian authors fascinated by pollution and waste – Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, and Richard Jefferies – and contextualizes their work in a broader discourse on waste by such figures as John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, Henry Mayhew, and Charles Darwin. For the Victorians, questions of nature and pollution were not only environmental or scientific. They also had serious implications for the way that society was structured. I argue that for some nineteenth-century writers, visions of strange, contaminated environments offered novel versions of the “natural” order, which in turn allowed them to depict alternative social orders that emphasized stewardship and care while challenging the logic of industrial capitalism. Scholars of the Victorian period have largely discussed depictions of filth in the context of England’s public health movement of the 1840s, identifying links between the containment of dirt and social boundaries. My dissertation builds on this work by arguing that pollution undermined Victorian efforts to distinguish the natural from the unnatural, enabling writers to portray different “natural” models of social, political, and economic organization. Taken together, the works of Mayhew, Braddon, Dickens, Browning, and Jefferies reflect a strain of Victorian thought that saw dirt and waste as central to the development of a just and compassionate social order. Rather than expressing an unmitigated disgust for contaminated spaces, these writers move beyond the nineteenth-century desire for the containment of filth to inscribe otherwise monstrous spaces with possibility.

This thesis focuses primarily upon three areas: a comparative analysis of those prosodic theories which form the historical context of the years 1908 - 1915; the ways in which Eliot and Pound came into contact with this discussion and the extent to which it contributes to their own criticism; and finally an analysis of how Pound and Eliot's poems from this period are conditioned by their authors' relationship to the then concurrent debates surrounding metrical form. Chapter One seeks to establish something of the origins of the core debate over metrical format, demonstrating the contrasting views upon the precise locus of 'form, ' as well as its continuance, and how these views affected poets writing in England to whom Pound and Eliot were later drawn. Chapter Two compares and contrasts the views of American authors on these subjects, suggesting how through an alternative relationship to "tradition, " American poets and pro sodists developed a more self-consciously radical approach. In Chapter Three, the focus is upon how Pound and Eliot came into contact with these attitudes and, based upon their own criticism, what their individual responses were. Chapter Four analyses the practical results these matters had for Eliot's early poetry, while Chapter Five offers a comparable analysis of Pound's early style(s).

No description available.

Vernon Lushington (1832-1912) was a leading Positivist and disciple of Comte's Religion of Humanity. In The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain T.R. Wright observed that "the inner struggles of many of [Comte's] English disciples, so amply documented in their note books, letters, and diaries, have not so far received the close sympathetic treatment they deserve". Material from a previously little known and un-researched archive of the Lushington family now makes possible such a study. After a childhood influenced by the values of the Clapham Sect, Lushington went to Cambridge where he came under the spell of Thomas Carlyle, for whom he worked for a period as an unpaid secretary, and then Auguste Comte whose Religion of Humanity finally replaced any lingering orthodox Christian faith. At Cambridge Lushington mixed with leading Christian Socialists and worked as a tutor at the Working Men's College alongside Ruskin and D.G. Rossetti. Other friends included William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who Lushington later introduced to Rossetti, an event which triggered the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, The altruistic Lushington used his legal skills to assist struggling trade union leaders consolidate their cause and his concern for the working classes led him to co-operate with Elizabeth Gaskell in raising funds to assist the struggling Manchester cotton operatives. It was as a Positivist that Lushington wished to be remembered. This thesis considers the attraction of Positivism for Lushington and his place in its development and spread during the second half of the nineteenth century. Specific areas covered are Lushington's childhood influences, his university life, his relationship with Carlyle and his adoption of Positivism. The thesis then turns to consider how Lushington outworked his new beliefs first in his public life - especially in the area of the Arts, and in then in his domestic role where his enthusiastic embrace of the Religion of Humanity placed severe strains on his marriage.

When Frank Prochaska first published his studies on philanthropy, he provided the most in-depth scholarship to date. But this research is now over 20 years old and is ready for review. It is also a purely historical analysis, with little archaeological content. This research seeks to enhance Prochaska's findings, using the archaeological record to evaluate, augment and further develop his findings. A complex web of personal and societal motivations interweave through individual philanthropic activity. Most research to date ignores this interconnectedness, or relegates it to subordinate status, producing a simplistic model. This research seeks to explore the relationship between personal impulse and societal pressure, investigating the affiliation between the two in diverse case studies, both UK and international. This is accomplished through archaeological methodology, and the exploration of material culture. The model proposed in this research provides a recognition of the complexity of personal and communal action. It draws heavily on a theoretical perspective that includes Bourdieu and Giddens. It places these theoretical perspectives within a practical and appropriate framework, to provide a robust analysis of change through philanthropic action. As such it complements much of the research of Prochaska, whilst providing a modern interpretation.