Victorian Popular Fictions Today: ‘feel these words as mama does!’

Q2 Arts and Humanities
A. King
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引用次数: 3

Abstract

This article is in two parts. The first seeks to set an agenda for the study of Victorian popular fiction by examining what the field comprises today in terms of texts studied, methodologies and affective engagement, and then thinking through the implications of studying such fiction today in a global and remediated context. I argue that Victorian sentimental popular fiction self-consciously models processes of relationship formation and exploration in its characters, its explicit scenes of reading, and above all in its plots, in order to mould and maintain readers’ relationships to it. “Sympathy” and its interrogation defines both the representation of characters’ relations to one another and readers’ relationship to that representation. It is a textual technique used by the fiction industry to create and maintain customer loyalty. Our affective responses to this technique constitute one reason we, as students of a still marginal field, continue to read it with energy and enthusiasm. What we need to do is self-consciously think through the implications of this energy’s rootedness in the commercial imperatives of the nineteenth-century publishing industry. Part 2 offers two case studies to examine that call, one very famous and the other virtually unknown, by American women writers whose work circulated globally: Susan Warner and E.D.E.N. Southworth. I ask what the ethical and methodological implications might be for the checking of our pleasure through what neuroaesthetics calls “cognitive elaboration.”
《今日维多利亚通俗小说》:像妈妈一样感受这句话!”
本文分为两部分。第一部分试图为维多利亚时代流行小说的研究制定一个议程,从研究的文本、方法和情感参与等方面考察该领域目前的构成,然后思考在全球和补救的背景下研究此类小说的意义。我认为,维多利亚时代的伤感通俗小说自觉地在其人物、明确的阅读场景中,尤其是在其情节中,塑造了关系形成和探索的过程,以塑造和维护读者与它的关系。“同情”及其审问既定义了人物相互关系的表征,也定义了读者与这种表征的关系。这是小说行业用来创造和保持客户忠诚度的一种文本技术。作为一个仍然处于边缘领域的学生,我们对这项技术的情感反应是我们继续充满活力和热情阅读它的原因之一。我们需要做的是自觉地思考这种能量植根于19世纪出版业商业需求的含义。第二部分提供了两个案例研究来研究这一呼吁,一个非常著名,另一个几乎不为人知,由美国女作家苏珊·华纳和E.D.E.N.索斯沃斯撰写,她们的作品在全球传播。我问,通过神经美学所称的“认知阐述”来检查我们的快乐,可能会有什么伦理和方法上的含义
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Victorian Popular Fictions
Victorian Popular Fictions Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
11
审稿时长
16 weeks
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