Victorian Afterlife
{{Victorian Afterlife}}
Basic Info
- Author: John Kucich
- Year: 2000
- Type: #secondary1
Summary (brief)
-Modernism is obsessed with the concept of the New as it strives compulsively to watch its own coming into being. Postmodernism looks for more radical disruptions, for breaks for events rather than new worlds, for the telltale instant after which history is no longer the same. There is an "extraordinary consumer demand for Victorian instances of historiographical metafiction" (xi). Aspects of late-century postmodernism could more appropriately be called "post-Victorian," a term that conveys the paradoxes of historical continuity and disruption" (xiii)
Major Themes
- Foregrounds the dysfunctions of cultural memory in the construction of post-modern identity
- The resurgent interest in the nineteenth century
Key Passages / Quotes
-see onenote entries
Quote 1
quote:: “Victorian sexuality, in particular, seems made for such retellings”
page:: xi
themes:: #adaptation #neo-victorian #postmodern-rewritings
Quote 2
quote:: “postmodern fetishizes notions of cultural emergence, and because the nineteenth century provides multiple eligible sites for theorizing such emergence”
page:: xv
themes:: #adaptation #neo-victorian #postmodern-rewritings
Genre Notes
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
-We see the present, and we see the past, and we try to build a cause and effect relationship between the two but maybe there is none. Linear time is a construction of Christianity.
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?
-This is why Neo-Victorian work is important; asks, why has contemporary culture preferred to engage in the 19th century as its historical "other?"
Critical Questions
-subvert normative body identity time
parameters of creative manipulation
how 20-21st writers draw or react
How is Truth Shaped
19th century reconceptualized
How do genre & craft shape truth