Literary studies and the academy

In 1885 the University of Oxford invited applications for the newly created Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. The holder of the chair was, according to the statutes, to ‘lecture and give instruction on the broad history and criticism of English Language and Literature, and on the works of approved English authors’. This was not in itself a particularly innovatory move, as the study of English vernacular literature had played some part in higher education in Britain for over a century. Oxford University had put English as a subject into its pass degree in 1873, had been participating since 1878 in extension teaching, of which literary study formed a significant part, and had since 1881 been setting special examinations in the subject for its non-graduating women students. What was new was the fact that this ancient university appeared to be on the verge of granting the solid academic legitimacy of an established chair to an institutionally marginal and often contentious intellectual pursuit, acknowledging the study of literary texts in English to be a fit subject not just for women and the educationally disadvantaged but also for university men

Time and the Moment in Victorian Literature and Society

Sudden changes, opportunities, or revelations have always carried a special significance in Western culture, from the Greek and later the Christian kairos to Evangelical experiences of conversion. This fascinating book explores the ways in which England, under the influence of industrializing forces and increased precision in assessing the passing of time, attached importance to moments, events that compress great significance into small units of time. Sue Zemka questions the importance that modernity invests in momentary events, from religion to aesthetics and philosophy. She argues for a strain in Victorian and early modern novels critical of the values the age invested in moments of time, and suggests that such novels also offer a correction to contemporary culture and criticism, with its emphasis on the momentary event as an agency of change.</jats:p

From the Punchmen to Pugin's Gothics: The Broad Road to a Sentimental Death in The Old Curiosity Shop

In The Old Curiosity Shop Dickens integrates a typically intricate variety of subplots, characters, and settings. And yet, more than his other novels, The Old Curiosity Shop has dismayed readers by its disunity and lack of design. By focusing on four of its seemingly disconnected motifis-the Punch and Judy show, the traveling waxworks, Gothicism, and gambling-I hope to show that a certain coherence is evident in the novel's preoccupation with questions of class position, class mobility, and the class status of various cultural practices. This preoccupation supplies as tight symbolic organization that underlies the disorder of the plot, but it does not indicate a thematically self-consistent text. On the contrary, the coherent symbolic economy of The Old Curiosity Shop is itself symptomatic of contradictions inherent in the ideological interleaving of Protestantism and capitalism in early Victorian England.</jats:p

The Death of Nancy "Sikes," 1838–1912

The brutal murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist was a theatrical favorite throughout the nineteenth century. The scene was realized in several media, not just in text and on stage, but also in public readings and silent film, as well as in the several plagiarized versions of the story; it thus provides a rich opportunity for assessing artistic violence between media. This essay argues that the multimedia history of Nancy's murder shows a culture in transition to technological modernity. This transition erodes the traditional affective register for melodramatic violence and leaves us with questions about the relationships between technological media, violence, and the allure of powerful momentary experiences.</jats:p