To understand hatred and civility in today’s world, argues Christopher Lane, we should start with Victorian fiction. Although the word ‘Victorian’ generally brings to mind images of prudish sexuality and well-heeled snobbery, it has above all become synonymous with self-sacrifice, earnest devotion, and moral rectitude. Yet this idealized version of Victorian England is surprisingly scarce in the period’s literature–and its journalism, sermons, poems, and plays–where villains, hypocrites, murderers, and cheats of all types abound.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction: Victorian Hatred, a Social Evil and a Social Good
Bulwer’s Misanthropes and the Limits of Victorian Sympathy
Dickensian Malefactors
Charlotte Brontâ on the Pleasure of Hating
George Eliot and Enmity
Life Envy in Robert Browning’s Poetry
Epilogue: Joseph Conrad and the Illusion of Solidarity
Circa l’autore
Christopher Lane is professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of
The Ruling Passion and
The Burdens of Intimacy: Psychoanalysis and Victorian Masculinity and the editor of
The Psychoanalysis of Race (Columbia, 1998).
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