William Thomson (1824-1907), an eminent physicist who contributed to the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, was also at the origin of a largely forgotten controversy concerning the ages of the Sun and the Earth. He used the laws of thermodynamics to calculate the age of our planet and he concluded that it was probably from 100 to 500 million years old, which was much lower than the estimations currently accepted by geologists, and threatened to put into question the darwinian theory of evolution. Moreover, thermodynamics did not only announce a gradual exhaustion of the resources of the Sun or of our planet, but also the heat death of the universe as a whole. This paper explores the uncertainties and the debates which were caused by such conceptions, which were also used, in a more imaginative way, by H. G. Wells in his famous novel The Time Machine.
{"title":"Géologie, théologie et inquiétudes eschatologiques: William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) et les débats suscités par la thermodynamique à l'époque victorienne","authors":"Jean-Michel Yvard","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2860","url":null,"abstract":"William Thomson (1824-1907), an eminent physicist who contributed to the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, was also at the origin of a largely forgotten controversy concerning the ages of the Sun and the Earth. He used the laws of thermodynamics to calculate the age of our planet and he concluded that it was probably from 100 to 500 million years old, which was much lower than the estimations currently accepted by geologists, and threatened to put into question the darwinian theory of evolution. Moreover, thermodynamics did not only announce a gradual exhaustion of the resources of the Sun or of our planet, but also the heat death of the universe as a whole. This paper explores the uncertainties and the debates which were caused by such conceptions, which were also used, in a more imaginative way, by H. G. Wells in his famous novel The Time Machine.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"15 12 1","pages":"237-252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86966508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent studies have underlined the relevance of the Victorian Age (whose temporal boundaries have been stretched to include the “long nineteenth century”) to the postmodern era. This essay narrows the topic to Dickens’s own relevance to postmodern aesthetics, through the question of theatricality. Dickens’s invention of public readings may be seen as an innovative method to advertise literary production, but it is also a tangible illustration of the type of boundary crossing valued by postmodern writers. With Dickens, who in this respect is very much in the Sternean-Shandian vein, theatrical performance is both inside the text (e.g. the parodic staging of Hamlet in Great Expectations) and outside the text, when dramatized versions of his novels are specially written to be acted out. It is the author’s versatility (implied as he was in a whole range of activities: fiction-writing, editing, journalism, publishing initiatives, amateur theatricals, speeches, public readings, business undertakings and so forth), together with the plurality within his works (the neo-baroque effect, perceptible among other things through the so-called “streaky bacon” or the “wonderful gargoyles”), which have served as a springboard for contemporary fiction-writers. Sarah Waters’s fictions, notably Fingersmith, have been almost unanimously praised for their plots, described as sheer “tour de force”. It can be claimed that Waters’s narrative ploys are borrowed from the theatrical world which held a real fascination for Dickens. With English Music, Ackroyd, for his part, illustrates what Clayton in his study: Charles Dickens in Cyberspace (2003) calls “undisciplined” creativity, by revisiting Great Expectations trans-artistically, through an odd combination of the pictorial, the musical, the cinematographic and the theatrical. This curious mixture of genres turns narration into fictionalized artistic performance, devised as a paean to the English tradition. At the other end of the spectrum, more iconoclastic literary experiments may be seen as bearing witness to Dickens’s off-the-beaten-track approach to novel-writing. Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations, by juxtaposing disjointed jump-cut sequences incorporating fantasy, personal statements and plagiarism transforms Dickensian theatrical performance into “narrative happenings”. As for Rushdie, the few pages he dedicates to Our Mutual Friend in his Satanic Verses capitalize on Dickens’s histrionic exuberance to stun the reader through verbal fireworks.
{"title":"From Dickens’s Theatrical Performance to Contemporary post Dickensian Narrative and Artistic Performance (Acker, Ackroyd, Waters and Rushdie)","authors":"G. Letissier","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3078","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies have underlined the relevance of the Victorian Age (whose temporal boundaries have been stretched to include the “long nineteenth century”) to the postmodern era. This essay narrows the topic to Dickens’s own relevance to postmodern aesthetics, through the question of theatricality. Dickens’s invention of public readings may be seen as an innovative method to advertise literary production, but it is also a tangible illustration of the type of boundary crossing valued by postmodern writers. With Dickens, who in this respect is very much in the Sternean-Shandian vein, theatrical performance is both inside the text (e.g. the parodic staging of Hamlet in Great Expectations) and outside the text, when dramatized versions of his novels are specially written to be acted out. It is the author’s versatility (implied as he was in a whole range of activities: fiction-writing, editing, journalism, publishing initiatives, amateur theatricals, speeches, public readings, business undertakings and so forth), together with the plurality within his works (the neo-baroque effect, perceptible among other things through the so-called “streaky bacon” or the “wonderful gargoyles”), which have served as a springboard for contemporary fiction-writers. Sarah Waters’s fictions, notably Fingersmith, have been almost unanimously praised for their plots, described as sheer “tour de force”. It can be claimed that Waters’s narrative ploys are borrowed from the theatrical world which held a real fascination for Dickens. With English Music, Ackroyd, for his part, illustrates what Clayton in his study: Charles Dickens in Cyberspace (2003) calls “undisciplined” creativity, by revisiting Great Expectations trans-artistically, through an odd combination of the pictorial, the musical, the cinematographic and the theatrical. This curious mixture of genres turns narration into fictionalized artistic performance, devised as a paean to the English tradition. At the other end of the spectrum, more iconoclastic literary experiments may be seen as bearing witness to Dickens’s off-the-beaten-track approach to novel-writing. Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations, by juxtaposing disjointed jump-cut sequences incorporating fantasy, personal statements and plagiarism transforms Dickensian theatrical performance into “narrative happenings”. As for Rushdie, the few pages he dedicates to Our Mutual Friend in his Satanic Verses capitalize on Dickens’s histrionic exuberance to stun the reader through verbal fireworks.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"41 1","pages":"299-311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85201405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The title of Turner’s painting, Rain, Steam and Speed, encapsulates the thematic description of a vast number of his works, but also evokes his swift pseudo-blot technique, which ventures to collaborate with the random laws of the elements and painting material. Indeed, his impetuous manner and use of steam-generating « thermic » colours, as he called them, reflect the subjects of his pictures which conjure up the contemporary discoveries of thermodynamics. The phrase « Rain, Steam and Speed » is also reminiscent of his programme of painting or « visuality » : his rain and steam are redolent of the mystical apophatic clouds, where spareness and asceticism are the sole means of access to the blaze of representation.
{"title":"Pluie, vapeur et vitesse chez Turner","authors":"M. Adrien","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2840","url":null,"abstract":"The title of Turner’s painting, Rain, Steam and Speed, encapsulates the thematic description of a vast number of his works, but also evokes his swift pseudo-blot technique, which ventures to collaborate with the random laws of the elements and painting material. Indeed, his impetuous manner and use of steam-generating « thermic » colours, as he called them, reflect the subjects of his pictures which conjure up the contemporary discoveries of thermodynamics. The phrase « Rain, Steam and Speed » is also reminiscent of his programme of painting or « visuality » : his rain and steam are redolent of the mystical apophatic clouds, where spareness and asceticism are the sole means of access to the blaze of representation.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"24 1","pages":"167-184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87150054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The purpose of this article is to examine the city of Port Sunlight, its history, design and originality. Created by William Lever in 1888 in order to house his newly-built soap factory, Port Sunlight is part of the numerous “factory villages” built in the wake of the industrial revolution according to philanthropic and utilitarian principles. But this article intends to show that Port Sunlight differs from other factory towns. Its careful design, elaborate architecture and public facilities epitomize the aesthetic and philosophical trends of the period and reveal a strongly ambivalent attitude towards industry and the type of landscapes it had created. Announcing Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, Port Sunlight endeavours to solve the material problem of working class housing while also addressing other more spiritual needs.
{"title":"Port Sunlight, essai architectural et social","authors":"Laurence Machet","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3106","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to examine the city of Port Sunlight, its history, design and originality. Created by William Lever in 1888 in order to house his newly-built soap factory, Port Sunlight is part of the numerous “factory villages” built in the wake of the industrial revolution according to philanthropic and utilitarian principles. But this article intends to show that Port Sunlight differs from other factory towns. Its careful design, elaborate architecture and public facilities epitomize the aesthetic and philosophical trends of the period and reveal a strongly ambivalent attitude towards industry and the type of landscapes it had created. Announcing Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, Port Sunlight endeavours to solve the material problem of working class housing while also addressing other more spiritual needs.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"6 1","pages":"495-506"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90758762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charles Darwin published The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits in October 1881, four months before his death. This article aims at understanding the reasons for the unexpectedly immense success the book immediately met with. Darwin was at the height of his fame and the Victorians were attracted to anything that stirred up their nostalgia for land and earth. Yet Darwin’s last opus was also a brilliant plea for the theory of the accumulation of small variations (drawing upon Lyellian uniformitarism) and for a new positioning of Man in the animal kingdom that departed from the old Judaeo-Christian tradition. It could be argued that the worm became Darwin’s efficient advocate who championed his views on evolution and anti-Creationism.
{"title":"La terre, dernier élément de Charles Darwin","authors":"M. Prum","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2857","url":null,"abstract":"Charles Darwin published The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits in October 1881, four months before his death. This article aims at understanding the reasons for the unexpectedly immense success the book immediately met with. Darwin was at the height of his fame and the Victorians were attracted to anything that stirred up their nostalgia for land and earth. Yet Darwin’s last opus was also a brilliant plea for the theory of the accumulation of small variations (drawing upon Lyellian uniformitarism) and for a new positioning of Man in the animal kingdom that departed from the old Judaeo-Christian tradition. It could be argued that the worm became Darwin’s efficient advocate who championed his views on evolution and anti-Creationism.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"105 1","pages":"229-236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74197218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
However emphatically Trollope denied the fact himself, it is striking that the characterization of the key character of The Eustace Diamonds, Lizzie Eustace, conjures up Thackeray’s fictional creature, Becky Sharp, the heroine of Vanity Fair, who appeared on the literary scene some twenty-five years before. This study first undertakes to assess the influence of the Thackerayan paradigm on Trollope’s creation. The two novelists indeed portray female adventurers — manipulative, immoral social climbers and materialistic, merciless predators, as is made particularly obvious with Lizzie’s intention to keep her husband’s inheritance, the eponymous jewels.Secondly, the resurgence of a former model in Trollope appears through the aesthetic treatment of the heroine, which relies on semantic fields that already pervade Thackeray’s novel — the animalization of the two deceitful characters and the theatricality of their behaviour. And yet, contrary to Thackeray, Trollope abstains from building a fascinating character for the reader, as evidenced by the scarcer use of images and the narrator’s bluntly calling the adventuress a “liar”, which amounts to depriving her of any potential aura.This strategy of constant disqualification allows for the emergence of a clear-cut ethical position, which seems absent from Vanity Fair. In Trollope, all kinds of narrative and stylistic strategies tend to deflate the adventuress and to stigmatize a conduct unambiguously presented as shameful. Consequently Lizzie Eustace becomes a counter-model used for didactic purposes, namely moral edification. It appears therefore that whereas the Horatian satire prevails in Thackeray, the Trollopian persona’s embittered tone recalls the Juvenalian satire aimed at the fallen world it lives in.
{"title":"Figures de l’aventurière dans The Eustace Diamonds, d’Anthony Trollope (1873) : le refoulement d’un retour","authors":"Jacqueline Fromonot","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3075","url":null,"abstract":"However emphatically Trollope denied the fact himself, it is striking that the characterization of the key character of The Eustace Diamonds, Lizzie Eustace, conjures up Thackeray’s fictional creature, Becky Sharp, the heroine of Vanity Fair, who appeared on the literary scene some twenty-five years before. This study first undertakes to assess the influence of the Thackerayan paradigm on Trollope’s creation. The two novelists indeed portray female adventurers — manipulative, immoral social climbers and materialistic, merciless predators, as is made particularly obvious with Lizzie’s intention to keep her husband’s inheritance, the eponymous jewels.Secondly, the resurgence of a former model in Trollope appears through the aesthetic treatment of the heroine, which relies on semantic fields that already pervade Thackeray’s novel — the animalization of the two deceitful characters and the theatricality of their behaviour. And yet, contrary to Thackeray, Trollope abstains from building a fascinating character for the reader, as evidenced by the scarcer use of images and the narrator’s bluntly calling the adventuress a “liar”, which amounts to depriving her of any potential aura.This strategy of constant disqualification allows for the emergence of a clear-cut ethical position, which seems absent from Vanity Fair. In Trollope, all kinds of narrative and stylistic strategies tend to deflate the adventuress and to stigmatize a conduct unambiguously presented as shameful. Consequently Lizzie Eustace becomes a counter-model used for didactic purposes, namely moral edification. It appears therefore that whereas the Horatian satire prevails in Thackeray, the Trollopian persona’s embittered tone recalls the Juvenalian satire aimed at the fallen world it lives in.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"90 1","pages":"265-274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83094627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Le colloque 2008 de la SFEVE a Aix-en-Provence, organise et soutenu par le LERMA (Laboratoire d’Etude et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone de l’Universite d’Aix-Marseille) avait pour theme les « Representations victoriennes et edouardiennes des quatre elements ». Il s’est attache a examiner les transformations que subit la representation des quatre elements dans l’imaginaire litteraire, le discours historique et les arts visuels sous l’effet des bouleversements scientifiques et sociaux des...
{"title":"Représentations victoriennes et édouardiennes des quatre éléments","authors":"Nathalie Vanfasse, Gilles Teulié","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2820","url":null,"abstract":"Le colloque 2008 de la SFEVE a Aix-en-Provence, organise et soutenu par le LERMA (Laboratoire d’Etude et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone de l’Universite d’Aix-Marseille) avait pour theme les « Representations victoriennes et edouardiennes des quatre elements ». Il s’est attache a examiner les transformations que subit la representation des quatre elements dans l’imaginaire litteraire, le discours historique et les arts visuels sous l’effet des bouleversements scientifiques et sociaux des...","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"1 1","pages":"31-36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78621538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire and its derived metaphors are omnipresent components of the Great God Pan, Arthur Machen’s decadent fin-de-siecle fantasy. Machen’s nightmarish novella relates the aftermath of a failed scientific experiment on a young female patient by a neurologist strongly influenced by alchemical writings. This cerebral exploration results in the bringing to light and subsequent release of an untamable subterranean force of regression, indistinction, and dissolution embodied in the central female character of Helen Vaughan. The latter, the monstrous progeniture of the young patient and of the eponymous satanic entity, is repeatedly associated with an impure underground fire, a sign of her transgressive all-consuming sexuality. Naturally, her dark protean character is to be aligned with other late-Victorian representations of venomous females, often characterized by the presence of flamboyant motifs. The fires of growing feminist rebellion, perceived in the 1890s as a threat to the very foundations of Victorian society, certainly animate Helen’s character. Crucially, fire is subjected to constant displacements and shifts in this narrative structured like a (bad) dream : it is a circulating trope most definitely indexing Victorian fears of degeneration and decline.
{"title":"« A unique aura of ancient, elemental evil » : les migrations du feu dans The Great God Pan (1894) d’Arthur Machen","authors":"Anne-Sophie Leluan-Pinker","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2834","url":null,"abstract":"Fire and its derived metaphors are omnipresent components of the Great God Pan, Arthur Machen’s decadent fin-de-siecle fantasy. Machen’s nightmarish novella relates the aftermath of a failed scientific experiment on a young female patient by a neurologist strongly influenced by alchemical writings. This cerebral exploration results in the bringing to light and subsequent release of an untamable subterranean force of regression, indistinction, and dissolution embodied in the central female character of Helen Vaughan. The latter, the monstrous progeniture of the young patient and of the eponymous satanic entity, is repeatedly associated with an impure underground fire, a sign of her transgressive all-consuming sexuality. Naturally, her dark protean character is to be aligned with other late-Victorian representations of venomous females, often characterized by the presence of flamboyant motifs. The fires of growing feminist rebellion, perceived in the 1890s as a threat to the very foundations of Victorian society, certainly animate Helen’s character. Crucially, fire is subjected to constant displacements and shifts in this narrative structured like a (bad) dream : it is a circulating trope most definitely indexing Victorian fears of degeneration and decline.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"7 2","pages":"127-138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72375898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study on the popular literary movement of the Kailyard aims to show that it was a necessary step to launch the Scottish Renaissance in the twentieth century. It concentrates on the founding trilogy of The Bonnie Briar Bush by Iain Maclaren, Auld Licht Idylls by James Barrie and The Stickit Minister by Samuel Crockett. It briefly explores the characteristics of the Kailyard before suggesting ten items belonging to the genre. After examining the main trend in the criticism of the Kailyard, it has been decided to bypass the usual English point of view so as to better appreciate the ironical tone of those texts deserving a study of what they are rather than what they should be. Neo-contextualism is a fruitful approach as it enables us to highlight the link between the Kailyard and the preceding Glasgow Boys movement. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the Kailyard movement stands on a strong position between Walter Scott’s novels and the fiction of the end of the Scottish Renaissance.
{"title":"La littérature populaire du Kailyard, substrat nécessaire à la Renaissance écossaise","authors":"Jean Berton","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3087","url":null,"abstract":"This study on the popular literary movement of the Kailyard aims to show that it was a necessary step to launch the Scottish Renaissance in the twentieth century. It concentrates on the founding trilogy of The Bonnie Briar Bush by Iain Maclaren, Auld Licht Idylls by James Barrie and The Stickit Minister by Samuel Crockett. It briefly explores the characteristics of the Kailyard before suggesting ten items belonging to the genre. After examining the main trend in the criticism of the Kailyard, it has been decided to bypass the usual English point of view so as to better appreciate the ironical tone of those texts deserving a study of what they are rather than what they should be. Neo-contextualism is a fruitful approach as it enables us to highlight the link between the Kailyard and the preceding Glasgow Boys movement. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the Kailyard movement stands on a strong position between Walter Scott’s novels and the fiction of the end of the Scottish Renaissance.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"311 1","pages":"367-388"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76433625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With George Cruikshank’s famous engraving London Going out of Town. The March of Bricks and Mortar (1829), that gives a nightmare, fantastic image of the ravages of urbanization, we can notice the innovative resort to the Gothic to deal with modern phenomena, something as yet unprecedented in the arts, and a device that will also be used by Dickens in the 1850s and 60s to evoke the railway. However, this recourse to the Gothic represents a paradox as the Gothic is supposed to belong to the dark, distant, uncivilized medieval past and it is here used to describe the new living conditions of the industrial era, and the growth of technology. Somehow, it seems logical to resort to the linguistic and symbolic tools of the uncanny to represent new, unknown and destabilizing realities, as in « The Signal-Man ». But what appears more surprising and paradoxical is the use of archaic elements, such as myth, and teratological images—as in Dombey and Son—to depict modernity. The reason may lie in the fact that trains or factories, belching fumes and staining everything about them, were seen as dangerous, all-powerful, voracious monsters and that writers were powerless in front of such disturbing, unprecedented phenomena and had to fall back on familiar, reassuring narrative techniques to come to terms with them. Describing new facts of life with old tools—this is the central paradox and the essential originality of Dickens’s fiction on the railway.
{"title":"La représentation paradoxale du chemin de fer chez Dickens : fantastique et mythe au service d’une peinture de la modernité dans Dombey and Son (1848) et « No. 1 Branch Line. The Signal-Man » (1866)","authors":"F. Dupeyron-Lafay","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2832","url":null,"abstract":"With George Cruikshank’s famous engraving London Going out of Town. The March of Bricks and Mortar (1829), that gives a nightmare, fantastic image of the ravages of urbanization, we can notice the innovative resort to the Gothic to deal with modern phenomena, something as yet unprecedented in the arts, and a device that will also be used by Dickens in the 1850s and 60s to evoke the railway. However, this recourse to the Gothic represents a paradox as the Gothic is supposed to belong to the dark, distant, uncivilized medieval past and it is here used to describe the new living conditions of the industrial era, and the growth of technology. Somehow, it seems logical to resort to the linguistic and symbolic tools of the uncanny to represent new, unknown and destabilizing realities, as in « The Signal-Man ». But what appears more surprising and paradoxical is the use of archaic elements, such as myth, and teratological images—as in Dombey and Son—to depict modernity. The reason may lie in the fact that trains or factories, belching fumes and staining everything about them, were seen as dangerous, all-powerful, voracious monsters and that writers were powerless in front of such disturbing, unprecedented phenomena and had to fall back on familiar, reassuring narrative techniques to come to terms with them. Describing new facts of life with old tools—this is the central paradox and the essential originality of Dickens’s fiction on the railway.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"8 1","pages":"101-112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84290617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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