Those who teach or research any kind of literature will, at some point, spend some time thinking about literary theory: about how we read, what we bring to the texts we read, and which approaches best suit our methodologies or modules. Whether your research interests are the Victorian novel or seventeenth-century poetry, theory is a crucial part of the discipline today, opening up new approaches and fresh fields of enquiry for literary scholars. Yet it sometimes seems to me that
Read moreAuthor: Serena Trowbridge
Art Revolutions in the Nineteenth Century
Serena Trowbridge, Birmingham City University This post relates to some research to which I return regularly, wondering where it will lead me. I’m interested in the ways in which ideas move, between people, across continents, and manifest themselves in art and literature as well as political ideology. Related to this, I am organising a conference on ‘Cultural Cross-Currents between Russia and Britain in the nineteenth century’, co-hosted by Birmingham City University and the State University of Tomsk. The cultural situation
Read moreVictorian Literature and the History and Philosophy of Psychology
Serena Trowbridge, Birmingham City University In March I had the opportunity to participate in a symposium at the British Psychological Society’s History and Philosophy of Psychology (HPP) Conference at the University of Surrey. This session was convened by Gregory Tate (Surrey), and included four papers: ‘Definitions of sanity and insanity in sensation novels by Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’ by Helena Ifill (Sheffield), ‘Diagnosis and mental trauma in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette’ by Alexandra Lewis (Aberdeen), ‘The self-diagnosis of Sydney
Read moreLiving the Nineteenth Century
Serena Trowbridge, Birmingham City University In the introduction to his book The Gothic Revival 1720-1870 (2002), Michael Charlesworth discusses the concept of ‘living the Gothic’, describing it as a point where the architectural and artistic intersect with the literary to form what we understand as Gothic, in interdisciplinary, cultural terms. He points out that the aspiration to ‘live’ the Gothic was often inspired by literature, as well as architecture, and also in turn inspired further literary works. Charlesworth discusses Beckford
Read moreReading and Reacting: The Heir of Redclyffe
Serena Trowbridge (Birmingham City University) Recently I re-read The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), Charlotte M. Yonge’s most famous novel. This is the romantic novel over which Jo March cried in Little Women, a book described as ‘genius’ by Henry James, and which provided an ideal of chivalry to the young William Morris and Burne-Jones. It enjoyed enormous popularity in the nineteenth century, though this has faded over the years, but recent work on Yonge examines her as a professional
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