Twilight histories : nostalgia and the Victorian historical novel /
Twilight Histories explores the relationship between nostalgia and the Victorian historical novel, arguing that both responded to the turbulence brought by accelerating modernization. Nostalgia began as a pathological homesickness, its first victims seventeenth-century soldiers serving abroad. Only...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Leiden ; Boston :
Brill,
[2023].
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| Series: | Costerus ;
new ser., v. 231. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Twilight Histories explores the relationship between nostalgia and the Victorian historical novel, arguing that both responded to the turbulence brought by accelerating modernization. Nostalgia began as a pathological homesickness, its first victims seventeenth-century soldiers serving abroad. Only gradually did it become the sentimental memory we understand it as today. In a striking parallel to nostalgia's origin, the historical novel emerged in the tumultuous early years of the nineteenth century, at a time when the Napoleonic Wars once again set troops on the move, creating a new wave of homesick soldiers. In the historical novels of Gaskell, Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot and Hardy, nostalgia offered a language in which to describe the experience of living through changing times as a homesickness for history. |
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| Physical Description: | vi, 241 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [217]-235) and indexes. |
| ISBN: | 9789004526501 9004526501 |