MLA Commons | Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature | Activity

Brian Gregory Caraher deposited "Gently, gently Northern Ire! Love that red hand!": Teaching James Joyce in Northern Ireland in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 03:05:39 -0400

This paper describes the social and cultural climate of teaching the works of James Joyce — including his journalism and major works of fiction from “Dubliners” through “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” — over the years 1993 to 2016 when the author was the Chair of English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. The author draws upon his…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Toward a Decolonial Queer Humanism: Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved and André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:00:11 -0500

This essay situates queer negativity within the modernist tradition. In The Well-Beloved (1897), Thomas Hardy satirizes the then-popular notion of racial memory for its racist, colonialist implications, inaugurating the modernist critique of romantic love as complicit with the self-delusions of the liberal-humanist subject. Despite the view shared…[Read more]

Sophie Christman deposited * Bustin’ Bonaparte: A Post-Apartheid Adaptation of Olive Schreiner’sThe Story of an African Farm in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 04:10:45 -0400

This article examines how the South African film Bustin’ Bonaparte (2004) presents a
post-apartheid adaptation of Victorian colonialism in Olive Schreiner’s 1883 English novel The Story
of an African Farm. While both narratives utilize the surprising mode of play to unfold competing
racial and gender hierarchies in colonial Africa, Lis…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Do Queer Theory and Victorian Studies Still Have Anything to Learn from Each Other? in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 03:48:44 -0400

This essay argues that an antiracist, anticolonialist Victorian studies must remain open to universalizing claims of the kind found in early works of queer theory, particularly Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). Although recent work in queer studies (as well as literary studies generally) finds inspiration in Sedgwick’s…[Read more]

Faye Hammill deposited The Frantic Atlantic: Ocean Liners in the Interwar Imagination in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 03:49:30 -0500

Transatlantic literary exchange depended, during the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, on the ocean liner. Books and periodicals were exported via sea routes, lent among passengers or through ships’ libraries, and even bought and sold on board. The High Seas Bookshops, established on some Anchor Line vessels in the 1920s, strikingly demonstrate the…[Read more]

Sophie Christman deposited The Rise of Proto-Environmentalism in George Eliot in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 02:29:26 -0500

The “Ilfracombe” journals, “Ex Oriente Lux,” and “A Minor Prophet” register the ways in which George Eliot’s nineteenth-century nonfiction prose and poetry evidence ecotheological concerns that are proto-environmental, concerns that are also reflected in some of her novels. Employing an ecocritical methodology, this article traces the developme…[Read more]

Sophie Christman deposited Bustin’ Bonaparte: A Post-Apartheid Adaptation of Olive Schreiner’sThe Story of an African Farm in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 02:25:56 -0500

Brian Gregory Caraher deposited The Correspondence of E M Forster and Forrest Reid: Content and Implications of a New Literary Archive in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 02:29:43 -0500

This essay/ article examines the provenance and the implications of a literary archive acquired by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of Queen’s University Belfast and now fully catalogued by Brian Caraher and Emma Hegarty under the auspices of the British Academy. The state-of-the-art. fully annotated, online catalogue establishes the…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited “Sinister Exile”: Dionysus and the Aesthetics of Race in Walter Pater and Vernon Lee in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 04:07:53 -0500

The aestheticism of Walter Pater and Vernon Lee participated in a late-nineteenth-century discourse devoted to exploring the aesthetic’s role in producing and sustaining, as well as undermining, notions of racial difference. Pater’s “A Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew” (1876) and Lee’s “Dionea” (1890) partake of Immanue…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Teaching Queer Theory beyond the Western Classroom in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 04:02:17 -0500

This article develops a theory of postcolonial queer pedagogy through reflections on teaching nineteenth-century literature at the National University of Singapore. Students draw on their experiences living in a culture torn between liberal and illiberal tendencies and recognize that such contradictions exist in both the Western and non-Western world.

Dustin Friedman deposited “The rarest, most complex & most lately developed form of aestheticism”: Olive Schreiner, decadence, and the aesthetic education of the senses in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 03:48:45 -0500

This essay focuses on Olive Schreiner’s personal correspondence and the allegories collected in Dreams (1890) to explore her complicated relationship to late-Victorian Decadence. I argue that Schreiner modified Decadent writers’ use of intersensoriality and synaesthesia to educate her readers into a new kind of common sense, one aligned with her…[Read more]

Carla Sassi posted an update in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature: The Jack Medal is awarded annually for the best article on a […]

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 06:58:16 -0400

The Jack Medal is awarded annually for the best article on a subject related to Reception or Diaspora in Scottish Literatures (including Scots, English, Gaelic and Latin). The award is named in honour of Professor Ronald Dyce Sadler Jack (1941-2016), Professor of Scottish and Mediaeval Literature at the University of Edinburgh from…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Weird Sex: Teleny and the History of Sexuality in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:16:00 -0400

In this article, I argue that that a close examination of the most sexually explicit scenes in the anonymous gay pornographic novel Teleny (1893) reveals that they do not anticipate the bourgeois, individualistic liberal gay subject described by Michel Foucault, but are instead more closely related to the cosmic horrors found in the genre of weird…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited E.M. Forster, the Clapham Sect, and the Secular Public Sphere in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:07:07 -0400

Critics have characterized E.M. Forster as an advocate of what Jürgen Habermas calls the “secular public sphere.” Yet Forster was critical of liberalism’s insistence that religious experiences should be translated into the language of secular rationality. The discussion of the Clapham Sect in “Henry Thornton” (1939) suggests that eighteenth…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Negative Eroticism: Lyric Performativity and the Sexual Subject in Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:56:04 -0400

This essay explores the radical subjectivism of Oscar Wilde’s novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889/1921), which celebrates the creative potential of nonessentialist forms of identity and yet cautions against jettisoning humanist notions of selfhood entirely. I contend that Wilde turned to G. W. F. Hegel’s performative theory of lyric…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Unsettling the Normative: Articulations of Masculinity in Victorian Literature and Culture in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:48:43 -0400

This article provides an overview of the academic study of Victorian masculinity. It argues that the pioneering work of feminist and sexuality studies scholars in Victorian studies during the 1970s and 1980s made it possible to discuss manhood critically as a historical and cultural phenomenon. It then presents a reading of major works on…[Read more]

Dustin Friedman deposited Paterian Cosmopolitanism: Euphuism, Negativity, and Genre in Marius the Epicurean in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 04:08:41 -0400

In this essay, I argue that Walter Pater’s description of “Euphuism” in Marius the Epicurean (1885) relies upon the insights of idealist philosophy in order to articulate a theory of what Rebecca Walkowitz calls “cosmopolitan style.” Specifically, Pater draws upon a disparate number of cultural discourses in his articulation of Euphuism while…[Read more]

George Phillips deposited Are trees forms? On formalism, material feminism, and historical literature in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 03:49:17 -0500

This essay draws on formalist cultural studies and material feminism to argue for a new approach in modernist studies, which I call formalist materialism, an approach that reads ecological forms alongside aesthetic forms. Such an approach may have distinct advantages. Formalist materialism illuminates a new direction for formalists by connecting…[Read more]

Jacob Jewusiak deposited Retirement in Utopia: William Morris's Senescent Socialism in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 16:25:31 -0400

This essay argues that William Morris’s work displaces an implicit youthful bias in theories of utopia and socialism by making senescence a structuring principle of his ideal society. For Morris, capitalist age ideology stratifies the lifespan into zones of youth and old age, usefulness and excess, and he perceived the rising reformist…[Read more]

James Gifford deposited Modernism (Syllabus) in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 03:53:53 -0400

Introduction to the literary theory, form, and style of Modernism, a literary movement that dominated the first half of the 20th century and continues to exert its influence over literature today, which, tellingly, is described by the label post-Modernism.

Flavio Gregori deposited CFP: 'Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel'. in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sat, 30 Mar 2019 16:32:38 -0400

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Securing their Worth in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 03:55:42 -0500

Compares how “Treasure Island” and “Charlotte’s Web” demonstrate how protagonist avatars for ourselves establish they truly matter to “parents” who pretend to value them but whose true lack of interest in them as individuals can’t be mistaken. Argues for seeing stories as recognizing the problem of “not being seen” by parents, and as them as…[Read more]

Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Marcher's Merger in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 03:59:08 -0500

Explores how Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” reads exactly as the sort of clinging back to a projected mother-figure, after freedom began to spell feelings of abandonment that psychically were proving increasingly intolerable, that object relations therapists finds in patients. Delineates how much of the story amounts to a tussle between…[Read more]

George Phillips deposited CFP: Global Modernisms and the Graphic in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 04:00:37 -0500

Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz’s field-defining article, “The New Modernist Studies,” turns ten in 2018. Despite the fact that the article takes up new media as a key topic-and although it was published just after ground-breaking work in the “visual turn” of literary studies by Mary Lou Emery (Modernism, the Visual, and Caribbean Literature,…[Read more]

Shawna Ross deposited Transatlantic Modernist Poetry (Graduate Syllabus) in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 03:48:44 -0500

This course, taught at Texas A&M University in Spring 2018, reads the entirety of the Norton anthology and enfolds readings of the Modernist Journals Project and scholarship by Morrisson, Esty, McKible and Churchill, Patterson, Ramazani, Jay, Berman, Chlak, Friedman, and Kalliney.

Susan Oliver deposited "Cloaking and Hiding: Dressing up in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae." in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 05:42:15 -0500

Abstract:
This article explores Robert Louis Stevenson’s use of costume as a device for exploring Scotland’s fetishization of it’s literary and cultural history. In Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae, the mythologizing of James Durie as the eponymous Master depends upon a series of dramatic costume changes. Durie confounds attempts to consign…[Read more]

James Gifford deposited NOTES Keep the Aspidistra Flying in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 20:14:56 -0500

Lecture/class notes on George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I’m sharing my teaching notes (rough) for works that may be helpful to others and are widely taught.

Mario Ortiz-Robles deposited Local Speech, Global Acts: Performative Violence and the Novelization of the World in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 20:24:20 -0500

This article examines the performativity of novelistic discourse in order to propose a different set of terms for understanding the circulation of the novel around the world than those that are based on the referential form/content model.

Mario Ortiz-Robles deposited Dickens Performs Dickens in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 01:19:40 -0500

On performativity of Dickens as author in his prefaces

Mario Ortiz-Robles deposited LiminAnimal: The Monster in Late Victorian Gothic Fiction in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 01:08:00 -0500

The animal characteristics of the monster in late Victorian gothic fiction make visible the biopolitical rationalisation of life in modern societies. Key moments in Bram Sto- ker’s Dracula and R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde provide evidence for the animality of late Victorian gothic monsters. In an extended reading of Ric…[Read more]

George Phillips deposited “Structures of Irony: Curiosity and Fetishism in Late Imperial London” in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 20:20:31 -0500

This essay argues that curiosity can work as irony’s shadow dialectic in modernist responses to imperialism and metropolitan culture, and suggests that curiosity deserves further exploration as a modernist device. Attentive to the settings and visual metaphors of space and structure that abet irony’s role, this essay finds that curiosity’s…[Read more]

James E. Dobson deposited Bits of Autobiography: Radical Deindividualization and Everydayness in the group Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:23:26 -0400

This essay focuses on the autobiographical strategies deployed by Ambrose Bierce in response to shifting conceptions of the literary representation of everyday life. I place Bierce at the transition point between nineteenth and twentieth-century realism, between an understanding of typical experience as comfortably generic and a growing sense that…[Read more]