Virtual Play and the Victorian Novel

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-108-83716-3
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 127, 230 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 501 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Pondering the town he had invented in his novels, Anthony Trollope had 'so realised the place, and the people, and the facts' of Barset that 'the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps'. After his novels end, William Thackeray wonders where his characters now live, and misses their conversation. How can we understand the novel as a form of artificial reality? Timothy Gao proposes a history of virtual realities, stemming from the imaginary worlds created by novelists like Trollope, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens. Departing from established historical or didactic understandings of Victorian fiction, Virtual Play and the Victorian Novel recovers the period's fascination with imagined places, people, and facts. This text provides a short history of virtual experiences in literature, four studies of major novelists, and an innovative approach for scholars and students to interpret realist fictions and fictional realities from before the digital age. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gao, Timothy

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. How to Play the Victorian Novel; Chapter Overview; 1. Virtual, Paracosmic, Fictional; 2. Authorship, Omnipotence, and Charlotte Brontë; 3. Plotting, Improvisation, and Anthony Trollope; 4. Continuation, Attachment, and William Makepeace Thackeray; 5. Description, Projection, and Charles Dickens; Conclusion. Approaching Virtuality.

Über Autor(innen)

Gao, Timothy
Timothy Gao is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He previously lectured at the University of Oxford, and his work has been published in Victorian Network and Victorian Literature and Culture.