Creating Character: Theories of Nature and Nurture in Victorian Sensation Fiction - Couverture souple

Ifill, Helena

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1526171813 ISBN 13 : 9781526171818

Editeur : Manchester University Press, 2023

Synopsis

This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about personality formation and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of seven sensation novels explore how they employ and challenge Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of 'nature' versus 'nurture', Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material ranging from medical textbooks, to sociological treatises, to popular periodicals, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how identity could be made and modified.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Helena Ifill is a Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Manchester University Press
• Date d'édition: 2023
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1526171813
• ISBN 13: 9781526171818
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218; gpsr.requests@easproject.com; ; Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia; Tallinn; 10621; Estonie