Author: Sudha Shastri
Publisher: Orient Longman
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 152
ISBN/UPC (if available): 978-81-250-2088-2
Description
This study explores the recall of the Victorians, displayed by select novels ranging in time form Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea to A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession: A Romance The novels that form the focus of this study are in themselves formidable studies of the Victorian period.
‘Intertextuality and Victorian Studies’ explores the recall of the Victorians, displayed by select novels ranging in time form Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) to A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession: A Romance (1990). These Victorianist novels are complex studies of Victorian literature, society and modes of representation. Their sophistication derives from an awareness of their textual identity, and their interaction with the Victorian period is best described as intertextual, in which paradigms like genre and gender play an important role in contributing to textual self-consciousness.
Since the Victorianist novel returns to the Victorian past without losing track of its rooted ness in the present it ensures that its readers are alive to the simultaneous presence of the world within the novel, and the world in which the novel is being read.
Intertextuality becomes focused in this study through the question, ‘How do we understand and interpret the Victorians?’ What emerges is the dynamic nature of intertextual operations that anticipate as well as foster fissures, openings, portals, boundaries and margins, thereby ensuring the ongoing nature of literary tradition.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Dramatic Monologue
2. The Ballad, the Fairy Tale and the Romance
3. The Novel
4. Gender and Intertextuality
5. Intertextual Devices
6. Perspectives
Bibliography
Index