The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea
To write about the sea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to do so against a vast accretion of past deeds, patterns of thought, and particularly patterns of expression, many of which had begun to feel not just settled but exhausted. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language takes up this circumstance, showing how prose writers in this period grappled with the super-conventionalized nature of the sea as a setting, as a shaper of plot and character, as a structuring motif, and as a source of metaphor.

But while writing about the sea required careful negotiation of multiple andsometimes conflicting associations, the sea's multiplicity and freight function not just as impediments to thought or expression but as sources of intellectual and expressive possibilities. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language treats a provocatively diverse group of key authors spanning from the 1830s to the 1930s and including both those inextricably associated with the sea (Frederick Marryat, Joseph Conrad) and those whose writings are less obviously marine, such as Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Virginia Woolf. What these writers share, among other things, is that they simultaneously register and turn to account the difficulties that attend writing about, and writing with, the sea. In the process, their sea-writing sheds new light on the value of marginalized representational techniques including repetition, cliché, and imprecision.
1140143317
The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea
To write about the sea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to do so against a vast accretion of past deeds, patterns of thought, and particularly patterns of expression, many of which had begun to feel not just settled but exhausted. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language takes up this circumstance, showing how prose writers in this period grappled with the super-conventionalized nature of the sea as a setting, as a shaper of plot and character, as a structuring motif, and as a source of metaphor.

But while writing about the sea required careful negotiation of multiple andsometimes conflicting associations, the sea's multiplicity and freight function not just as impediments to thought or expression but as sources of intellectual and expressive possibilities. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language treats a provocatively diverse group of key authors spanning from the 1830s to the 1930s and including both those inextricably associated with the sea (Frederick Marryat, Joseph Conrad) and those whose writings are less obviously marine, such as Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Virginia Woolf. What these writers share, among other things, is that they simultaneously register and turn to account the difficulties that attend writing about, and writing with, the sea. In the process, their sea-writing sheds new light on the value of marginalized representational techniques including repetition, cliché, and imprecision.
98.0 In Stock
The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea

The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea

by Matthew P.M. Kerr
The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea

The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea

by Matthew P.M. Kerr

Hardcover

$98.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    In stock. Ships in 1-2 days.
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

To write about the sea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to do so against a vast accretion of past deeds, patterns of thought, and particularly patterns of expression, many of which had begun to feel not just settled but exhausted. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language takes up this circumstance, showing how prose writers in this period grappled with the super-conventionalized nature of the sea as a setting, as a shaper of plot and character, as a structuring motif, and as a source of metaphor.

But while writing about the sea required careful negotiation of multiple andsometimes conflicting associations, the sea's multiplicity and freight function not just as impediments to thought or expression but as sources of intellectual and expressive possibilities. The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language treats a provocatively diverse group of key authors spanning from the 1830s to the 1930s and including both those inextricably associated with the sea (Frederick Marryat, Joseph Conrad) and those whose writings are less obviously marine, such as Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Virginia Woolf. What these writers share, among other things, is that they simultaneously register and turn to account the difficulties that attend writing about, and writing with, the sea. In the process, their sea-writing sheds new light on the value of marginalized representational techniques including repetition, cliché, and imprecision.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780192843999
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 05/03/2022
Series: Oxford English Monographs
Pages: 306
Product dimensions: 8.90(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Matthew P.M. Kerr, Lecturer in British Literature from 1837 to 1939, University of Southampton

bMatthew P. M. Kerr/b completed his undergraduate degree at Mount Allison, a small liberal arts college in the Canadian Maritimes, and his postgraduate degrees at the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada award-holder. He has worked at the University of Southampton since 2015. Matt is from Vancouver, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Shallows and Deeps2. Marryat Repeats Himself3. The Imitatable Charles Dickens: Marine Cliché in Dombey and Son4. Unsolved Seas the Victorian Novel: Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens and Brontë5. Joseph Conrad's Departures: Maritime Precision, Particularity, and Abstraction6. One, Two, One, Two: Sea Power and Sea Styles in The Voyage Out and The Waves
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews