Narrative Guilt and the Victorian Novel

IF 0.2 3区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY VICTORIAN STUDIES Pub Date : 2022-10-01 DOI:10.2979/victorianstudies.64.3.02
Will Glovinsky
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Abstract

Abstract:This essay considers the phenomenon of Victorian narrators who express compunction or uneasy conscience about the ways in which they portray characters. In novels by Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, the narrative guilt accompanying the treatment of antagonists reflects the period's contradictory cultural priorities of sociological analysis and melodramatic aesthetics. Where the emerging field of sociology viewed crime as socially contingent—therefore encouraging a systemic account of responsibility—melodramatic aesthetics required villains who could concentrate social responsibility in a single malign figure. The fusing of these political and aesthetic impulses in Victorian realism resulted in a narrative structure both highly dependent on individual culprits and highly ambivalent about scapegoating. This essay proposes that the narrative guilt arising from this impasse, and efforts to redress it through reparative sympathy, contribute to the distinctive affective texture of Victorian realism.
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叙事内疚与维多利亚小说
摘要:本文研究了维多利亚时代的叙述者对自己塑造人物的方式表达自责或不安的良心的现象。在安东尼·特罗洛普、查尔斯·狄更斯和乔治·艾略特的小说中,伴随着对对手的处理的叙事内疚反映了那个时期社会分析和情节戏剧美学的矛盾文化优先事项。新兴的社会学领域将犯罪视为社会偶然性——因此鼓励对责任的系统描述——情节戏剧美学要求恶棍能够将社会责任集中在一个邪恶的人物身上。在维多利亚现实主义中,这些政治和审美冲动的融合导致了一种高度依赖于个人罪犯和高度矛盾的替罪羊的叙事结构。本文认为,这种僵局所产生的叙事内疚,以及通过补偿性同情来纠正它的努力,促成了维多利亚现实主义独特的情感质感。
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来源期刊
VICTORIAN STUDIES
VICTORIAN STUDIES HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.90
自引率
9.10%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: For more than 50 years, Victorian Studies has been devoted to the study of British culture of the Victorian age. It regularly includes interdisciplinary articles on comparative literature, social and political history, and the histories of education, philosophy, fine arts, economics, law and science, as well as review essays, and an extensive book review section. An annual cumulative and fully searchable bibliography of noteworthy publications that have a bearing on the Victorian period is available electronically and is included in the cost of a subscription. Victorian Studies Online Bibliography
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