Rewriting the Victorians

The 19th century has become especially relevant for the present—as one can see from, for example, large-scale adaptations of written works, as well as the explosion of commodities and even interactive theme parks. This book is an introduction to the novelistic refashionings that have come after the Victorian age with a special focus on revisions of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. As post–Victorian research is still in the making, the first part is devoted to clarifying terminology and interpretive contexts.
Two major frameworks for reading post–Victorian fiction are developed: the literary scene (authors, readers, critics) and the national-identity, political and social aspects. Among the works examined are Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge, Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs, Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, D.M. Thomas’s Charlotte, and Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair.

Andrea Kirchknopf is a lecturer at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Andrea Kirchknopf
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 236
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7134-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0192-2
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Preface 1
Introduction to Post-Victorian Fiction: State of the Art 5
1  From Victorian to Post-Victorian: Definitions, Terminology and Contexts 17
2  Post-Victorian Fiction and the Literary Scene 48
3  Post-Victorian Fiction in Its Political and Social Context 77
4  Jane Eyre Tailor-Made: A Case Study of the Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Charlotte Adaptive Chain of Novels 107
5  The Way We Adapt Now: Endings, Novel Series and Adaptive Maps 147
Conclusion: Ways Forward in Researching Post-Victorian Fiction 186
Chapter Notes 193
Works Cited 202
Index 215

First Books in Literatures in English Award—European Society for the Study of English Book
“a valuable contribution to the study of post-Victorian fiction…informative and thought-provoking…insightful and detailed close analyses of post–Victorian novels”—Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies; “a clever mix of existing and new scholarly insights into the debates over British national identity dominating this subgenre since its very inception.”—Neo-Victorian Studies.