Book Cover
E-book
Author Schramm, Jan-Melissa.

Title Atonement and self-sacrifice in nineteenth-century narrative / Jan-Melissa Schramm
Published New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012
Online access available from:
Cambridge Core    View Resource Record  

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Series Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 80
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 80
Contents Cover; ATONEMENT AND SELF-SACRIFICE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVE; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; VICTORIAN SUFFERING AND 'THE GIFT OF A TRANSFERRED LIFE'; VARIETIES OF VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE: TWO CASE STUDIES -- EDWARD CARSON AND MAGGIE TULLIVER; APORIAS OF SYMPATHY; WHAT THE READER LEARNS (1) -- THE ETHICS OF RECOGNITION; WHAT THE READER LEARNS (2) -- THE POLITICS OF RECONCILIATION; JUSTICE AND MERCY; CALCULATION AND CHRISTIAN SACRIFICE; OUTLINE OF THIS STUDY
Summary Jan-Melissa Schramm explores the conflicted attitude of the Victorian novel to sacrifice, and the act of substitution on which it depends. The Christian idea of redemption celebrated the suffering of the innocent: to embrace a life of metaphorical self-sacrifice was to follow in the footsteps of Christ's literal Passion. Moreover, the ethical agenda of fiction relied on the expansion of sympathy which imaginative substitution was seen to encourage. But Victorian criminal law sought to calibrate punishment and culpability as it repudiated archaic models of sacrifice that scapegoated the innocent. The tension between these models is registered creatively in the fiction of novelists such as Dickens, Gaskell and Eliot, at a time when acts of Chartist protest, national sacrifices made during the Crimean War, and the extension of the franchise combined to call into question what it means for one man to 'stand for', and perhaps even 'die for', another
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Self in literature.
Atonement in literature.
Self-sacrifice in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Atonement in literature
English fiction
Self in literature
Self-sacrifice in literature
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781139518826
1139518828
9781139108713
1139108719
1280774150
9781280774157
9781139515313
1139515314
9781107507609
110750760X
1107231477
9781107231474
1139508253
9781139508254
1139517899
9781139517898
1139514393
9781139514392
1139516965
9781139516969