This essay reads Thomas Hardy’s 1887 novel, The Woodlanders, alongside nineteenth-century fermentation science in order to make a case for the value of ‘process’ as an interpretive keyword complementary to traditional questions of form and progress. In examining Hardy’s emphasis on maintenance work, it offers an interpretive path through the divergent poles of ‘new’ and ‘old’ materialism. Looking to the novel’s lively descriptions of consumption, fermentation, and decay, I suggest that attention to The Woodlanders’ processes offers both an alternate to modes of reading dictated by the assumption of an organic whole, and insights into Hardy’s politics of interdependence. To make this case, I begin by examining the way the woodlanders’ bioregional consumption patterns both index the entanglement of humans and their environments and reveal the precarity that exists within seemingly stable rural lifestyles. In the second section, I argue that reading the precarious processes of rural life alongside nineteenth-century fermentation science offers a surprising account of preservation through change: the decay of old socio-ecological relations opens possibilities for catalysing new ones. The third section builds on the second by reading The Woodlanders along with Marx’s theories of societal metabolism. Rather than a vision of social purity or boundedness, this conjunction yields a model of the social body that sees interdependence as a condition of continuity.
{"title":"Microbial Matters: Form and Process in Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders","authors":"Molly MacVeagh","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac070","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay reads Thomas Hardy’s 1887 novel, The Woodlanders, alongside nineteenth-century fermentation science in order to make a case for the value of ‘process’ as an interpretive keyword complementary to traditional questions of form and progress. In examining Hardy’s emphasis on maintenance work, it offers an interpretive path through the divergent poles of ‘new’ and ‘old’ materialism. Looking to the novel’s lively descriptions of consumption, fermentation, and decay, I suggest that attention to The Woodlanders’ processes offers both an alternate to modes of reading dictated by the assumption of an organic whole, and insights into Hardy’s politics of interdependence. To make this case, I begin by examining the way the woodlanders’ bioregional consumption patterns both index the entanglement of humans and their environments and reveal the precarity that exists within seemingly stable rural lifestyles. In the second section, I argue that reading the precarious processes of rural life alongside nineteenth-century fermentation science offers a surprising account of preservation through change: the decay of old socio-ecological relations opens possibilities for catalysing new ones. The third section builds on the second by reading The Woodlanders along with Marx’s theories of societal metabolism. Rather than a vision of social purity or boundedness, this conjunction yields a model of the social body that sees interdependence as a condition of continuity.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47517834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dating from the middle of the nineteenth century, prominent paranormal researchers in Britain and the United States began to claim that they could see through time. Using clairvoyant powers, they proposed to solve the mysteries of geology and palaeontology, not least by filling in the missing links in the evolution of life. This article explores the literary outputs of these figures, with an especial focus on the Anglo-American ‘psychometers’ William and Elizabeth Denton and selected members of the Theosophical Society, including Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. I argue that clairvoyants’ narratives of exploration in the prehistoric past were heavily indebted not just to the technical concepts of mainstream palaeoscience, but also to the figurative language and visual iconography used by palaeoscientists and science writers, including their metaphors of necromancy and visual spectacle. The vivid language of Victorian palaeoscience, crafted to see the unseeable events of prehistory, has been studied in depth by students of literature and science; recently, literary scholars have paid increasing attention to the imaginative prose of occult science writing. I bring these bodies of scholarship together, contesting that Romantic conceptions of science motivated paranormal researchers to literalize the figurative language of time-travel deployed by more orthodox palaeoscientists. Examining the work of the Dentons, Blavatsky, and others, I show that that the vivid literature of palaeoscience inspired a realm where practitioners on the fringes of elite science could make bold if precarious claims, instilling individual agency into the abysm of deep time.
{"title":"Seen through Deep Time: Occult Clairvoyance and Palaeoscientific Imagination","authors":"R. Fallon","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac069","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Dating from the middle of the nineteenth century, prominent paranormal researchers in Britain and the United States began to claim that they could see through time. Using clairvoyant powers, they proposed to solve the mysteries of geology and palaeontology, not least by filling in the missing links in the evolution of life. This article explores the literary outputs of these figures, with an especial focus on the Anglo-American ‘psychometers’ William and Elizabeth Denton and selected members of the Theosophical Society, including Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. I argue that clairvoyants’ narratives of exploration in the prehistoric past were heavily indebted not just to the technical concepts of mainstream palaeoscience, but also to the figurative language and visual iconography used by palaeoscientists and science writers, including their metaphors of necromancy and visual spectacle. The vivid language of Victorian palaeoscience, crafted to see the unseeable events of prehistory, has been studied in depth by students of literature and science; recently, literary scholars have paid increasing attention to the imaginative prose of occult science writing. I bring these bodies of scholarship together, contesting that Romantic conceptions of science motivated paranormal researchers to literalize the figurative language of time-travel deployed by more orthodox palaeoscientists. Examining the work of the Dentons, Blavatsky, and others, I show that that the vivid literature of palaeoscience inspired a realm where practitioners on the fringes of elite science could make bold if precarious claims, instilling individual agency into the abysm of deep time.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48136297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the representation of machinery by industrial workers in the Victorian period, and argues that their writings have a qualitatively different literary approach to machinery than that found in the work of established Victorian authors. It uses little-known poems by Scottish and Northern working-class writers to investigate how they use language and form to reflect upon the place of machinery in their working lives.
{"title":"Addressing the Machine: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and Industrial Machinery","authors":"K. Blair","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac064","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the representation of machinery by industrial workers in the Victorian period, and argues that their writings have a qualitatively different literary approach to machinery than that found in the work of established Victorian authors. It uses little-known poems by Scottish and Northern working-class writers to investigate how they use language and form to reflect upon the place of machinery in their working lives.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46253614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Catalogue of Labouring-Class and Self-Taught Poets, c. 1700–1900: A Reflection","authors":"J. Goodridge","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac058","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41320071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Prize-fighting culture in the Victorian period was a male-dominated arena. As such, women’s involvement in pugilism – save for their role as spectators – has been largely overlooked by historians. This article casts light on the neglected experiences of nineteenth-century female prize-fighters, drawing attention to the ways in which women engaged in pugilism as well as the methods used by reporters, police officers and magistrates to shape public perceptions of female violence. It is argued that female prize-fighters received an overwhelmingly hostile reception, their very involvement in the masculine fighting environment resonating with contemporary anxieties over public immorality, violent crime, and the emergent movement for women’s emancipation.
{"title":"Pugilism in Petticoats: Women and Prize-Fighting in Victorian Britain","authors":"Grace Di Méo","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac062","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Prize-fighting culture in the Victorian period was a male-dominated arena. As such, women’s involvement in pugilism – save for their role as spectators – has been largely overlooked by historians. This article casts light on the neglected experiences of nineteenth-century female prize-fighters, drawing attention to the ways in which women engaged in pugilism as well as the methods used by reporters, police officers and magistrates to shape public perceptions of female violence. It is argued that female prize-fighters received an overwhelmingly hostile reception, their very involvement in the masculine fighting environment resonating with contemporary anxieties over public immorality, violent crime, and the emergent movement for women’s emancipation.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43743250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents analysis of the memorial to William Hodson in Lichfield Cathedral, designed by George Edmund Street between 1859 and 1862, focusing on the iconography of the monument and way that it was influenced by Muscular Christianity and ecclesiology. The attitude of Hodson and his brother George Hodson, who commissioned the monument, is examined through analysis of the publication that presented Hodson’s career to the Victorian public: Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India (1859). The memorial raises urgent questions about the future of Victorian cultural heritage as it demonstrably misrepresents a highly symbolic event within British imperial history. Hodson was represented as a hero by Victorian ecclesiologists but is now seen by many as an unscrupulous and ruthless imperialist. This paper will demonstrate that the extraordinary form of the tomb was determined by an alteration to the design: the inclusion of a sculptural panel representing the ‘Surrender of the King of Delhi’. This change was instigated by the committee of the Ecclesiological Society headed by A. J. Beresford Hope. The panel turns a relatively peripheral event into a symbolic tableau: the surrender of Indian Islam to British Christianity, a distortion typical of British culture in the aftermath of the Indian Uprising of 1857–1858. The historiography of Hodson’s career shows that the tomb has acted as a focus for those wishing to perpetuate a conservative interpretation of Hodson’s career.
{"title":"Remembering Hodson’s Horse: Commemoration and the Indian Uprising of 1857–58","authors":"J. Cheshire","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac068","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents analysis of the memorial to William Hodson in Lichfield Cathedral, designed by George Edmund Street between 1859 and 1862, focusing on the iconography of the monument and way that it was influenced by Muscular Christianity and ecclesiology. The attitude of Hodson and his brother George Hodson, who commissioned the monument, is examined through analysis of the publication that presented Hodson’s career to the Victorian public: Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India (1859). The memorial raises urgent questions about the future of Victorian cultural heritage as it demonstrably misrepresents a highly symbolic event within British imperial history. Hodson was represented as a hero by Victorian ecclesiologists but is now seen by many as an unscrupulous and ruthless imperialist. This paper will demonstrate that the extraordinary form of the tomb was determined by an alteration to the design: the inclusion of a sculptural panel representing the ‘Surrender of the King of Delhi’. This change was instigated by the committee of the Ecclesiological Society headed by A. J. Beresford Hope. The panel turns a relatively peripheral event into a symbolic tableau: the surrender of Indian Islam to British Christianity, a distortion typical of British culture in the aftermath of the Indian Uprising of 1857–1858. The historiography of Hodson’s career shows that the tomb has acted as a focus for those wishing to perpetuate a conservative interpretation of Hodson’s career.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46101443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines the work of a group of Railwaymen Poets, whose verse has been collected as part of the Piston, Pen and Press project. It explores their writings both as part of an emerging theme of accident and loss poetry surrounding the railways in Victorian culture but also more specifically as interrelated texts produced by workers sharing common experiences. Whilst many wrote about all manner of subjects, not just the railway accident, public fascination with accident reporting allowed them to both pursue their literary endeavours and also to use poetry as a form of catharsis. Their poetry, this paper argues, should be read as a collective expression of emotion around the dangerous and loss-ridden nature of their work.
{"title":"Immediate Accidents and Lingering Trauma: Railwaymen Poets, Danger, and Emotive Verse","authors":"Oliver Betts","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac063","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper examines the work of a group of Railwaymen Poets, whose verse has been collected as part of the Piston, Pen and Press project. It explores their writings both as part of an emerging theme of accident and loss poetry surrounding the railways in Victorian culture but also more specifically as interrelated texts produced by workers sharing common experiences. Whilst many wrote about all manner of subjects, not just the railway accident, public fascination with accident reporting allowed them to both pursue their literary endeavours and also to use poetry as a form of catharsis. Their poetry, this paper argues, should be read as a collective expression of emotion around the dangerous and loss-ridden nature of their work.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45588968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"William Calder Marshall’s Imperial Homonormativity: Righteousness and Peace Have Kissed Each Other (1862–63)","authors":"Jason Edwards","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43666371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：