Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature - Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy

This 1999 study explores the importance of ideas and narratives of ancestry and kinship in constructing Victorian identity.

List of contents

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.

Summary

This 1999 study discusses what makes people believe they are part of a region, race or nation, and shows how ideas of ancestry and kinship, and the narratives inspired by or invented around them, were of profound significance in the construction of Victorian identity.

Product details

• Authors: Sophie Gilmartin
• Assisted by: Gillian Beer (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.05.2012
• EAN: 9780521560948
• ISBN: 978-0-521-56094-8
• No. of pages: 298
• Dimensions: 157 mm x 235 mm x 22 mm
• Weight: 637 g
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteent
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies