Neo-/Victorian Biographilia and James Miranda Barry - A Study in Transgender and Transgenre

Senior colonial officer from 1813 to 1859, Inspector General James Barry was a pioneering medical reformer who after his death in 1865 became the object of intense speculation when rumours arose about his sex. This cultural history of Barry's afterlives in Victorian to contemporary (neo-Victorian) life-writing ('biographilia') examines the textual and performative strategies of biography, biofiction and biodrama of the last one and a half centuries. In exploring the varied reconstructions and re-imaginations of the historical personality across time, the book illustrates (not least with its cover image) that the 'real' James Barry does not exist, any more than does the 'faithful' biographical, biofictional or biodramatic rendering of a life in a generically 'stable' and discrete form. What Barry represents and how he is represented invariably pinpoints the imaginative, the speculative and the performative: reflections and refractions in the looking glass of genre. Just as 'James Miranda Barry', as a subject of cultural inquiry, comes into being and remains in view in the act of crossing gender, so neo-Victorian life-writing constitutes itself through similar acts of boundary transgression. Transgender thus finds its most typical expression in transgenre.

List of contents

1 Writing Barry - Writing Gender/Genre Crossing:An Introduction.- 2 'Tell Me Your Secret, Doctor James': A Cultural History of James Barry.- 3 Myths and Afterlives: Foundation Stories and Body Plots.- 4 Performances in Gender and Genre: Barry in Contemporary Postmodernist Biodrama, Biography and Biofiction.- 5 TransFormations: Transgender and Transgenre in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Life-Writing - A Conclusion

About the author

Ann Heilmann is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, UK. The author of three previous monographs, on New Woman Fiction, New Woman Strategies, and Neo-Victorianism (with Mark Llewellyn), she has co-edited a scholarly edition and essay collection on the Anglo-Irish author George Moore. Further (single and collaborative) work includes four essay collections and four anthology sets on late-Victorian, early twentieth-century and contemporary feminism and women’s writing.  

Summary

Senior colonial officer from 1813 to 1859, Inspector General James Barry was a pioneering medical reformer who after his death in 1865 became the object of intense speculation when rumours arose about his sex. This cultural history of Barry’s afterlives in Victorian to contemporary (neo-Victorian) life-writing (‘biographilia’) examines the textual and performative strategies of biography, biofiction and biodrama of the last one and a half centuries. In exploring the varied reconstructions and re-imaginations of the historical personality across time, the book illustrates (not least with its cover image) that the ‘real’ James Barry does not exist, any more than does the ‘faithful’ biographical, biofictional or biodramatic rendering of a life in a generically ‘stable’ and discrete form. What Barry represents and how he is represented invariably pinpoints the imaginative, the speculative and the performative: reflections and refractions in the looking glass of genre. Just as ‘James Miranda Barry’, as a subject of cultural inquiry, comes into being and remains in view in the act of crossing gender, so neo-Victorian life-writing constitutes itself through similar acts of boundary transgression. Transgender thus finds its most typical expression in transgenre. 

Report

"Neo-/Victorian Biographilia is a brilliant addition to both nineteenth-century studies and transgender studies. Anyone who has puzzled over the gender-bending moments in the Brontës or Wilkie Collins-pick your favorite author-will find Heilmann's study valuable. It is one of the best guides I have read about Victorian and neo-Victorian gender performance." (Martha Vicinus, Victorian Studies, Vol. 62(1), 2019)

Product details

• Authors: Ann Heilmann
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2018
• EAN: 9783319713854
• ISBN: 978-3-31-971385-4
• No. of pages: 402
• Dimensions: 151 mm x 217 mm x 29 mm
• Weight: 678 g
• Illustrations: XXIV, 402 p. 32 illus.
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies