The novels of high life called "Silver-Fork" and those about criminals known as "Newgate" novels dominated fiction in early Victorian Britain. Their enormous popularity eventually incited heated debate regarding authorial responsibility and the tolerable and the admissible in literature. Charles Dickens and, even more broadly, William Makepeace Thackeray, authors of the first rank in the nineteenth-century literary canon, participated in these debates along with novelists writing in these subgenres but little read today like William Harrison Ainsworth, Catherine Frances Gore, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. / This study argues that to understand the sociohistorical significance of the rise and fall of the Silver-Fork and the Newgate phenomena in popular culture during the 1820s and 1830s, one must attend to the increasing consolidation of middle class ethics in these years. The decline of the Silver-Fork and Newgate novels was mainly the consequence of widespread middle-class hostility toward this popular literature of high life and crime that failed to embody and confirm middle-class moral perspective. / It was Thackeray who, reflecting the growing intolerance of the Victorian middle class for both Silver-Fork and Newgate novels, attempted to correct the false, even hazardous, view of reality implied in these two popular forms. A major argument in this study is that, through his efforts to disrupt the Silver-Fork and Newgate manner in Victorian fiction, Thackeray contributed much in establishing, solidifying, and perpetuating middle-class ideology in Victorian literature. / Adopting a social and historical approach, this study describes the effects of early Victorian middle-class ideology on literary taste through an analysis of the overt struggle between Silver-Fork and Newgate novelists, and Thackeray. By doing so, it aims to open a new perspective on such issues in Victorian literature as social class, popularity, and acceptability. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1632. / Major Professor: John Fenstermaker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77699 |
| Contributors | Gye, Joengmeen., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 235 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
Page generated in 0.0093 seconds