Victorian surfaces in nineteenth-century literature and culture : Skin, silk, and show 1st ed.
Author
Additional Author(s)
Baumbach, Sibylle
Ratheiser, Ulla
Publisher
Cham, Switzerland : Springer International Publishing, 2021
Language
English
ISBN
9783030753979
Series
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture
Subject(s)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
MOTION PICTURES
SURFACES (TECHNOLOGY)
Notes
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Abstract
This volume explores the politics and poetics of Victorian surfaces in their manifold manifestations. In so doing, it examines various cultural products ‘as they are’ and highlights the art of surface composition in the Victorian era as well as the socio-cultural ramifications of the preoccupation with the exterior. By closely reading the various surfaces materialising in Victorian literature and culture, the individual contributions explore the dialectics of surface and depth in Victorian (and Neo-Victorian) cultures as well as the legibility of surfaces. They look into the surfaces of literary narratives, paintings, and film but also into natural surfaces such as skin or bark. Each chapter foregrounds what is present rather than absent in a text, while also paying attention to the surfaces that become manifest on the diegetic level of the text, be they cloth, landscapes, or human bodies or faces.
This is an open access book.
