Ancestry Narrative 19C British Lit: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Cambridge University Press, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521023573, ISBN10: 0521023572
Paperback, 300 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
This 1999 study addresses the question of why ideas of ancestry and kinship were so important in nineteenth-century society, and particularly in the Victorian novel. Through readings of a range of literary texts, Sophie Gilmartin explores questions fundamental to the national and racial identity of Victorian Britons: what makes people believe that they are part of a certain region, race or nation? Is this sense of belonging based on superstitious beliefs, invented traditions, or fictions created to gain a sense of unity or community? As Britain extended her empire over foreign nations and races, questions of blood relations, of assimilation and difference, and of national and racial definition came to the fore. Gilmartin's study shows how the ideas of ancestry and kinship, and the narratives inspired by or invented around them, were of profound significance in the construction of Victorian identity.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Textual note
the novels
Introduction
1. Oral and written genealogies in Edgeworth's The Absentee
2. A mirror for matriarchs
the cult of Mary Queen of Scots in nineteenth-century literature
3. Pedigree, nation, race
the case of Disraeli's Sybil and Tancred
4. 'A sort of Royal family'
alternative pedigrees and class in Meredith's Evan Harrington
5. Pedigree, sati and the widow in Meredith's The Egoist
6. Pedigree and forgetting in Hardy
7. Geology and genealogy
Hardy's The Well-Beloved
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.