| Description |
1 online resource (x, 225 pages). |
| Series |
Liverpool English texts and studies ; 63 |
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Liverpool English texts and studies ; 63.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-219) and index. |
| Note |
Print version record. |
| Contents |
Introduction: The Unchaining of the Beast -- 1. City Creatures -- 2. The Bat and the Beetle -- 3. Morlocks, Martians, and Beast-People -- 4. 'Beast and man so mixty': The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald -- 5. Oscar Wilde: 'an unclean beast' -- Conclusion. |
| Summary |
A critical exploration of travel, animals and shape-changing in fin de siècle literature. Bats, beetles, wolves, butterflies, bulls, panthers, apes, leopards and spiders are among the countless creatures that crowd the pages of literature of the late nineteenth century. Whether in Gothic novels, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, journalism, political discourse, realism or naturalism, the line between the human and the animal becomes blurred. Beastly Journeys examines these bestial transformations across a range of well-known and less familiar texts and shows how they are provoked not only by the mutations of Darwinism but by social and economic shifts that have been lost in retellings and readings of them. The physical alterations described by George Gissing, George MacDonald, Arthur Machen, Arthur Morrison, W.T. Stead, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, and many of their contemporaries, are responses to changes in the social body as Britain underwent a series of social and economic crises. Metaphors of travel - social, spatial, temporal, mythical and psychological - keep these stories on the move, confusing literary genres along with the indeterminacy of physical shape that they relate. Beastly Journeys will appeal to anyone interested in the relationship between nineteenth-century literature and its contexts and especially to those interested in the fin de siècle and in metaphors of travel, animals and shape-changing. |
| Subject |
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
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Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Animals in literature.
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Travel in literature.
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Shapeshifting.
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Animals in literature. (OCoLC)fst00809580
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English literature. (OCoLC)fst00911989
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Literature and society. (OCoLC)fst01000096
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Shapeshifting. (OCoLC)fst01748560
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Travel in literature. (OCoLC)fst01155640
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Great Britain. (OCoLC)fst01204623
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| Chronological Term |
1800-1899
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
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History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Youngs, Tim, 1961- Beastly journeys. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2013 9781846319587 (OCoLC)857110258 |
| ISBN |
9781781386071 (electronic bk.) |
|
1781386072 (electronic bk.) |
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9781781380895 (electronic bk.) |
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1781380899 (electronic bk.) |
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9781781385524 (electronic bk.) |
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1781385521 (electronic bk.) |
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9781846319587 (cased) |
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1846319587 (cased) |
|
