{"title":"Working Lives and Beyond: The Workplace and the Formation of Popular Literary Cultures","authors":"F. Moine","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac060","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45192648","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}
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, there arose a type of circus performer in England called ‘Shakespearean clowns’. These clowns constituted a transitory figure between the age of Georgian pantomime clowns and the establishment of the typical circus clown in the later part of the century. One of the more neglected representatives of the genre was James Clement Boswell, who enjoyed a brief period of success in England before becoming a sensation in Paris during the 1850s. Although he was universally praised, his clowning also evoked bafflement. This article studies reviews of and periodical articles on Boswell in order to get a picture of his performances and clown persona, and of how critics perceived him and turned him into an example of the melancholy clown trope. The resistance that Boswell’s act and persona offered to the writers, however, illustrates that he was part of a change in the figure of the clown from its early nineteenth century incarnation to the twentieth-century clown and comic. Boswell’s clowning prefigures the irony and deadpan comedy that would become more prevalent in modern comedy. He is also illustrative of the increasing detachment of the clown figure from representations of a social reality, and the creation of the modern circus clown as an essentially unreal character that epitomizes a separate outlook on life.
{"title":"The Imperturbable Seriousness of the Circus Buffoon: The Shakespearean Clown on the Threshold of Modern Comedy","authors":"Peter Andersson","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac061","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Around the middle of the nineteenth century, there arose a type of circus performer in England called ‘Shakespearean clowns’. These clowns constituted a transitory figure between the age of Georgian pantomime clowns and the establishment of the typical circus clown in the later part of the century. One of the more neglected representatives of the genre was James Clement Boswell, who enjoyed a brief period of success in England before becoming a sensation in Paris during the 1850s. Although he was universally praised, his clowning also evoked bafflement. This article studies reviews of and periodical articles on Boswell in order to get a picture of his performances and clown persona, and of how critics perceived him and turned him into an example of the melancholy clown trope. The resistance that Boswell’s act and persona offered to the writers, however, illustrates that he was part of a change in the figure of the clown from its early nineteenth century incarnation to the twentieth-century clown and comic. Boswell’s clowning prefigures the irony and deadpan comedy that would become more prevalent in modern comedy. He is also illustrative of the increasing detachment of the clown figure from representations of a social reality, and the creation of the modern circus clown as an essentially unreal character that epitomizes a separate outlook on life.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45021161","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":"Labour, Literature and Culture in the Not Just Long but also ‘Vast Nineteenth Century’","authors":"Bridget M. Marshall","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61037832","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 argues for attention to downward and lateral vectors of class mobility in the Victorian novel by pointing out how such attention can allow us to rethink conventional readings of the genre’s ideological normativity. A reconsideration of the role of taste in Gaskell’s North and South reveals that the novel represents taste not an inherent sign of Margaret and John Thornton’s superiority, but rather as a practiced and conscious cultivation of social capital in the face of threats to their economic security. Scenes in the novel in which Margaret and Thornton exhibit their taste are correlated with moments in which the economic instability of their positions is emphasized. I argue that this means the novel represents taste as linked to their experience of downward mobility. The novel also takes care to exhibit the different social milieus in Victorian England and their contrasting systems of social distinction. These contrasts, in combination with Margaret and Thornton’s desires for global travel and influence, represent travel as a form of lateral class mobility which can be successfully achieved using taste as a form of transportable social capital. In its representation of taste as practiced, rather than naturalized, in response to the various vectors of mobility, the novel complicates our vision of the Victorian novel as symbolizing the rise of the middle class. Ultimately, setting aside our expectations about upward class mobility by Victorian protagonists allows us to see new ways novels critique middle-class ideology.
{"title":"Taste in North and South Reconsidered: A Case for Attention to Downward and Lateral Mobility in the Victorian Novel","authors":"Claudia Carroll","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac053","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article argues for attention to downward and lateral vectors of class mobility in the Victorian novel by pointing out how such attention can allow us to rethink conventional readings of the genre’s ideological normativity. A reconsideration of the role of taste in Gaskell’s North and South reveals that the novel represents taste not an inherent sign of Margaret and John Thornton’s superiority, but rather as a practiced and conscious cultivation of social capital in the face of threats to their economic security. Scenes in the novel in which Margaret and Thornton exhibit their taste are correlated with moments in which the economic instability of their positions is emphasized. I argue that this means the novel represents taste as linked to their experience of downward mobility. The novel also takes care to exhibit the different social milieus in Victorian England and their contrasting systems of social distinction. These contrasts, in combination with Margaret and Thornton’s desires for global travel and influence, represent travel as a form of lateral class mobility which can be successfully achieved using taste as a form of transportable social capital. In its representation of taste as practiced, rather than naturalized, in response to the various vectors of mobility, the novel complicates our vision of the Victorian novel as symbolizing the rise of the middle class. Ultimately, setting aside our expectations about upward class mobility by Victorian protagonists allows us to see new ways novels critique middle-class ideology.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42444862","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 Touch of Empire: Joseph E. Boehm’s Monument to Charles George Gordon (c. 1887–1889)","authors":"Katrina Manica","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46865692","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 examines how the late nineteenth-century Salvation Army used consumer activism as a fundraising strategy, an impetus towards social change, and a means of consolidating its visible presence in public and domestic settings. It argues that the Salvation Army was unique in its combination of its own production systems with the creation and capture of an unusually far-reaching activist market. As much of its support came from lower-income communities, the Salvation Army developed ways to facilitate their participation in activist consumption. Harnessing consumer identity allowed the organization to cast its supporters as active participants, and both donations to and purchases from the Salvation Army were framed as positive changes in consumer behaviour connected to spiritual welfare. Much of this process was refracted through the Trade Department, which competed with secular sellers to produce a range of household essentials; but this also put pressure on the membership to use their consumer power to benefit the Salvation Army whenever possible. The article draws on the organization’s substantial periodical output to interrogate the communication strategies that underpinned these consumer engagement practices. It offers a comparative analysis of two examples of the Salvation Army’s commercial ventures during this period: the trading activities centred around the Trade Department, and the Darkest England Match Factory. It argues that while the Trade Department demonstrates the success of the organization’s own brand of accessible consumer activism, the match factory shows a failure in the communication strategies designed to win consumers for the Salvation Army cause.
{"title":"‘Buy Cheap, Buy Dear!’: Selling Consumer Activism in the Salvation Army c. 1885–1905","authors":"Flore Janssen","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac051","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines how the late nineteenth-century Salvation Army used consumer activism as a fundraising strategy, an impetus towards social change, and a means of consolidating its visible presence in public and domestic settings. It argues that the Salvation Army was unique in its combination of its own production systems with the creation and capture of an unusually far-reaching activist market. As much of its support came from lower-income communities, the Salvation Army developed ways to facilitate their participation in activist consumption. Harnessing consumer identity allowed the organization to cast its supporters as active participants, and both donations to and purchases from the Salvation Army were framed as positive changes in consumer behaviour connected to spiritual welfare. Much of this process was refracted through the Trade Department, which competed with secular sellers to produce a range of household essentials; but this also put pressure on the membership to use their consumer power to benefit the Salvation Army whenever possible. The article draws on the organization’s substantial periodical output to interrogate the communication strategies that underpinned these consumer engagement practices. It offers a comparative analysis of two examples of the Salvation Army’s commercial ventures during this period: the trading activities centred around the Trade Department, and the Darkest England Match Factory. It argues that while the Trade Department demonstrates the success of the organization’s own brand of accessible consumer activism, the match factory shows a failure in the communication strategies designed to win consumers for the Salvation Army cause.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41568370","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":"An Episcopal Puzzle: George Richmond’s Monument to Bishop Charles James Blomfield (1859–67)","authors":"W. Whyte","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46679752","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}
George Gissing’s friend and fellow novelist, H. G Wells, would remember the ‘last decade of the nineteenth century’ as ‘an extraordinarily favourable time for new writers’(H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries of a Very Ordinary Brain, Volume II (Since 1866) (London: Gollancz, 1934), p. 506.). His experience fits neatly with the myths of the successful Victorian male author that were in circulation throughout the century. For the vast majority of writers, however, the reality was quite different. As many scholars have recognized, George Gissing’s 1891 novel, New Grub Street, presents a realistic portrayal of the travails of the average writer trying to live by their pen at the turn of the century. Nonetheless, little work has examined these economic travails against the backdrop of nineteenth-century images of male authorship. Bringing together work on Victorian masculinities, research on cultural depictions of syphilis, and work on the nineteenth-century marketplace alongside current Gissing scholarship and primary sources, this article will argue that Gissing’s novel foregrounds the shared ‘exchange economy’ of prostitution and the literary market to explore specifically masculine anxieties around the male author at the fin de siècle (Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture: Medicine, Knowledge and the Spectacle of Victorian Invisibility (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 131.). In tracing the interconnections of pox, prose, and prostitution, this article re-negotiates the novel’s relationship with other images of Victorian authorship, as well as using work on cultural depictions of syphilis to position the text in a new field.
{"title":"Pox, Prose, and Prostitution: Masculine Anxiety, the Myth of the Male Author, and the Late-Victorian ‘Exchange Economy’ in George Gissing’s New Grub Street","authors":"Stephen Whiting","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac054","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 George Gissing’s friend and fellow novelist, H. G Wells, would remember the ‘last decade of the nineteenth century’ as ‘an extraordinarily favourable time for new writers’(H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries of a Very Ordinary Brain, Volume II (Since 1866) (London: Gollancz, 1934), p. 506.). His experience fits neatly with the myths of the successful Victorian male author that were in circulation throughout the century. For the vast majority of writers, however, the reality was quite different. As many scholars have recognized, George Gissing’s 1891 novel, New Grub Street, presents a realistic portrayal of the travails of the average writer trying to live by their pen at the turn of the century. Nonetheless, little work has examined these economic travails against the backdrop of nineteenth-century images of male authorship. Bringing together work on Victorian masculinities, research on cultural depictions of syphilis, and work on the nineteenth-century marketplace alongside current Gissing scholarship and primary sources, this article will argue that Gissing’s novel foregrounds the shared ‘exchange economy’ of prostitution and the literary market to explore specifically masculine anxieties around the male author at the fin de siècle (Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture: Medicine, Knowledge and the Spectacle of Victorian Invisibility (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 131.). In tracing the interconnections of pox, prose, and prostitution, this article re-negotiates the novel’s relationship with other images of Victorian authorship, as well as using work on cultural depictions of syphilis to position the text in a new field.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45101675","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}
The publication in 2021 of the Oxford English Texts version of Oscar Wilde’s Russian melodrama Vera; or, the Nihilist (1883), based, as it is, on new archival research by its editor Josephine Guy, deepens the mystery surrounding the alleged censorship of Oscar Wilde’s first play. While Wilde himself promoted the idea that the expression of democratic ideals in his Nihilist play had prevented its performance in England, a genetic analysis of an early manuscript version of the play (1881) made available in the OET Vera and Guy’s reconstructed play-text of the first performance, problematizes the putative censorship of the play on political grounds. In conjunction with new readings of Wilde’s Poems (1881) and his letters from the period, the genetic analysis that follows crystallizes attendant issues concerning the extent of Wilde’s radicalism at the outset of his career and the nature of his commitment to Irish republicanism per se. Where the Chief Examiner of Plays (E. F. S. Pigott) promoted the idea that there was no political censorship of the theatre at the end of the Victorian period, the examples of the alleged suppression of Wilde’s melodrama and the experiences of his mentor, the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, at the hands of the British press evince the multiple forms of political censorship and self-censorship that came to shape (and impede) the development of the late-Victorian stage.
2021年，奥斯卡·王尔德的俄罗斯情节剧《维拉》的牛津英语文本版将出版;《虚无主义者》(Nihilist, 1883)是根据编辑约瑟芬·盖伊(Josephine Guy)的最新档案研究写成的，它加深了围绕奥斯卡·王尔德(Oscar Wilde)第一部戏剧所谓的审查制度的谜团。虽然王尔德本人认为，他的虚无主义戏剧中表达的民主理想阻碍了它在英国的演出，但对该戏剧的早期手稿版本(1881年)的基因分析，在OET Vera和Guy重建的第一次演出的剧本文本中提供，对该戏剧的政治审查提出了问题。结合对王尔德诗歌(1881年)的新阅读和他在这一时期的信件，接下来的遗传分析明确了王尔德在职业生涯开始时激进主义的程度以及他对爱尔兰共和主义本身的承诺的性质。戏剧首席审查员(E. F. S. Pigott)提出，在维多利亚时代末期，剧院没有政治审查，而王尔德情节剧被压制的例子，以及他的导师、爱尔兰剧作家迪翁·布西柯(Dion Boucicault)在英国媒体手中的经历，表明了多种形式的政治审查和自我审查，这些审查和自我审查形成(并阻碍)了维多利亚晚期舞台的发展。
{"title":"Political Censorship on the Late-Victorian Stage: Rereading Oscar Wilde’s Vera; or, the Nihilist[s]","authors":"S. Kandola","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The publication in 2021 of the Oxford English Texts version of Oscar Wilde’s Russian melodrama Vera; or, the Nihilist (1883), based, as it is, on new archival research by its editor Josephine Guy, deepens the mystery surrounding the alleged censorship of Oscar Wilde’s first play. While Wilde himself promoted the idea that the expression of democratic ideals in his Nihilist play had prevented its performance in England, a genetic analysis of an early manuscript version of the play (1881) made available in the OET Vera and Guy’s reconstructed play-text of the first performance, problematizes the putative censorship of the play on political grounds. In conjunction with new readings of Wilde’s Poems (1881) and his letters from the period, the genetic analysis that follows crystallizes attendant issues concerning the extent of Wilde’s radicalism at the outset of his career and the nature of his commitment to Irish republicanism per se. Where the Chief Examiner of Plays (E. F. S. Pigott) promoted the idea that there was no political censorship of the theatre at the end of the Victorian period, the examples of the alleged suppression of Wilde’s melodrama and the experiences of his mentor, the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, at the hands of the British press evince the multiple forms of political censorship and self-censorship that came to shape (and impede) the development of the late-Victorian stage.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46918159","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 examines Catherine Helen Spence’s Autobiography through the lens of settler colonial sociability. It argues that Spence strategically depicts associational life in the Autobiography to showcase for her readers a version of organized settler colonial sociability that envisages a role for White, middle-class urban women in the construction and expansion of settler colonial Australia. Spence’s literary and political sociability extends between Australia, Britain and the US. While it is transnational in scope, however, at the same it is exclusionary in its politics: as its very foundation rests on the exclusion of the White working classes and Australian Indigenous peoples.
{"title":"Catherine Helen Spence’s Autobiography: Literary Culture and Associational Life in Nineteenth-Century South Australia","authors":"Fariha Shaikh","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac037","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines Catherine Helen Spence’s Autobiography through the lens of settler colonial sociability. It argues that Spence strategically depicts associational life in the Autobiography to showcase for her readers a version of organized settler colonial sociability that envisages a role for White, middle-class urban women in the construction and expansion of settler colonial Australia. Spence’s literary and political sociability extends between Australia, Britain and the US. While it is transnational in scope, however, at the same it is exclusionary in its politics: as its very foundation rests on the exclusion of the White working classes and Australian Indigenous peoples.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43024126","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}
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