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Author Youngs, Tim, 1961- author.

Title Beastly journeys : travel and transformation at the fin de siècle / Tim Youngs
Published Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource (1 electronic resource (x, 225 pages))
Series Liverpool English texts and studies ; 63
Liverpool English texts and studies ; 63.
Contents Introduction: The Unchaining of the Beast -- 1. City Creatures -- 2. The Bat and the Beetle -- 3. Morlocks, Martians, and Beast-People -- 4. 'Beast and man so mixty': The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald -- 5. Oscar Wilde: 'an unclean beast' -- Conclusion
Summary A critical exploration of travel, animals and shape-changing in fin de siècle literature. Bats, beetles, wolves, butterflies, bulls, panthers, apes, leopards and spiders are among the countless creatures that crowd the pages of literature of the late nineteenth century. Whether in Gothic novels, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, journalism, political discourse, realism or naturalism, the line between the human and the animal becomes blurred. Beastly Journeys examines these bestial transformations across a range of well-known and less familiar texts and shows how they are provoked not only by the mutations of Darwinism but by social and economic shifts that have been lost in retellings and readings of them. The physical alterations described by George Gissing, George MacDonald, Arthur Machen, Arthur Morrison, W.T. Stead, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, and many of their contemporaries, are responses to changes in the social body as Britain underwent a series of social and economic crises. Metaphors of travel - social, spatial, temporal, mythical and psychological - keep these stories on the move, confusing literary genres along with the indeterminacy of physical shape that they relate. Beastly Journeys will appeal to anyone interested in the relationship between nineteenth-century literature and its contexts and especially to those interested in the fin de siècle and in metaphors of travel, animals and shape-changing
Analysis literature
modern history
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-219) and index
Notes This work is licensed by Knowledge Unlatched under a Creative Commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
English
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Subject Animals in literature.
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
Shapeshifting.
Travel in literature.
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900.
Literary studies: general.
Literature and literary studies.
Literature: history and criticism.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Comparative Literature.
Animals in literature
English literature
Literature and society
Shapeshifting
Travel in literature
Great Britain
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2019667879
ISBN 9781781386071
1781386072
9781781380895
1781380899
9781781385524
1781385521