Victorian Interpretation

by Suzy Anger

Overview

Suzy Anger investigates the relationship of Victorian interpretation to the ways in which literary criticism is practiced today. Her primary focus is literary interpretation, but she also considers fields such as legal theory, psychology, history, and the natural sciences in order to establish the pervasiveness of hermeneutic thought in Victorian culture. Anger's book demonstrates that much current thought on interpretation has its antecedents in the Victorians, who were already deeply engaged with the problems of interpretation that concern literary theorists today.

Anger traces the development and transformation of interpretive theory from a religious to a secular (and particularly literary) context. She argues that even as hermeneutic theory was secularized in literary interpretation it carried in its practice some of the religious implications with which the tradition began. She further maintains that, for the Victorians, theories of interpretation are often connected to ethical principles and suggests that all theories of interpretation may ultimately be grounded in ethical theories.

Beginning with an examination of Victorian biblical exegesis, in the work of figures such as Benjamin Jowett, John Henry Newman, and Matthew Arnold, the book moves to studies of Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde. Emphasizing the extent to which these important writers are preoccupied with hermeneutics, Anger also shows that consideration of their thought brings to light questions and qualifications of some of the assumptions of contemporary criticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801442018
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/16/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Suzy Anger is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. She is the editor of Knowing the Past: Victorian Literature and Culture, also from Cornell.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsAn Overview1. Victorian Scriptural Hermeneutics: History, Intention, and EvolutionIntertext I: Victorian Legal Interpretation2. Carlyle: Between Biblical Exegesis and Romantic HermeneuticsIntertext 2: Victorian Science and Hermeneutics: The Interpretation of Nature3. George Eliot's Hermeneutics of SympathyIntertext 3: Victorian Literary Criticism4. Subjectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Intention: Oscar Wilde and Literary HermeneuticsEpilogueNotes
Index

What People are Saying About This

James Eli Adams

Victorian Interpretation is a wonderfully bold, erudite, and bracing rethinking of Victorian intellectual method. In charting the emergence of a general hermeneutics in nineteenth-century Britain, Suzy Anger offers pointed revaluations of major Victorian thinkers and Victorian thought generally, and deftly underscores their relevance to the way we interpret now. This is a book that should engage historians and theorists alike.

Rosemarie Bodenheimer

Suzy Anger has written an astute, deeply informed history of Victorian theories of interpretation. As she thinks her way into the sophisticated balances struck by Victorian minds, Anger's own narrative exemplifies the double embrace of epistemological doubt and ethical commitment that she traces through the nineteenth century.

George Levine

"Suzy Anger's book on Victorian hermeneutics will significantly reshape our understanding of the critical tradition that has formed the discipline of literary study. Anger's critical and scholarly virtues are multiple, and they work to illuminate both philosophical issues and the development of literary criticism through the nineteenth century into modernism. The book taught me an enormous amount about hermeneutics and, even more important for literary scholars, the way the hermeneutic tradition entered into and helped shape and anticipate modern criticism. Anger is one of those rare literary critics who has truly mastered philosophical issues and who can speak authoritatively across the disciplines. She has helped change the shape of the field."

Gerhard Joseph

Suzy Anger moves between biblical and secular, German and British, Victorian and twentieth-century theories of interpretation with great tact, eloquence, and originality. Exploring both the continuities and the swervings within such pairs, she isolates a distinctively British hermeneutic tradition in the links among Carlyle, Newman, George Eliot, and Wilde with a persuasive force that immediately establishes her as a literary/philosophical critic of the highest order.

Editorial Reviews

Anger examines Victorian contributions to the development of a secular hermeneutic tradition.... The result is a study that usefully combines specificity of analysis and broadness of range and makes a lucid case for the sophistication and significance of Victorian critical thought.

Choice

The book offers a brilliant and radical reevaluation of Victorian thought processes and will require students of Victorian culture and historians of literary theory to reformulate their ideas about what the Victorians knew and thought about interpretation in all areas of their lives.

Victorian Review

The intellectual courage of this book lies in its commitment to mapping out a broad sweep of the history of ideas while gesturing to the afterlives of nineteenth-century hermeneutics in twentieth-century literary theory. Above all this book invites its readers to engage in intellectual dialogue beyond the bounds of nineteenth-century British studies.

Victorian Studies

Anger examines Victorian contributions to the development of a secular hermeneutic tradition.... The result is a study that usefully combines specificity of analysis and broadness of range and makes a lucid case for the sophistication and significance of Victorian critical thought.

-- "Choice"

The book offers a brilliant and radical reevaluation of Victorian thought processes and will require students of Victorian culture and historians of literary theory to reformulate their ideas about what the Victorians knew and thought about interpretation in all areas of their lives.

-- "Victorian Review"

The intellectual courage of this book lies in its commitment to mapping out a broad sweep of the history of ideas while gesturing to the afterlives of nineteenth-century hermeneutics in twentieth-century literary theory. Above all this book invites its readers to engage in intellectual dialogue beyond the bounds of nineteenth-century British studies.

-- "Victorian Studies"

From the Publisher

"Suzy Anger's book on Victorian hermeneutics will significantly reshape our understanding of the critical tradition that has formed the discipline of literary study. Anger's critical and scholarly virtues are multiple, and they work to illuminate both philosophical issues and the development of literary criticism through the nineteenth century into modernism. The book taught me an enormous amount about hermeneutics and, even more important for literary scholars, the way the hermeneutic tradition entered into and helped shape and anticipate modern criticism. Anger is one of those rare literary critics who has truly mastered philosophical issues and who can speak authoritatively across the disciplines. She has helped change the shape of the field."

George Levine

"Suzy Anger moves between biblical and secular, German and British, Victorian and twentieth-century theories of interpretation with great tact, eloquence, and originality. Exploring both the continuities and the swervings within such pairs, she isolates a distinctively British hermeneutic tradition in the links among Carlyle, Newman, George Eliot, and Wilde with a persuasive force that immediately establishes her as a literary/philosophical critic of the highest order."

Gerhard Joseph

"Suzy Anger has written an astute, deeply informed history of Victorian theories of interpretation. As she thinks her way into the sophisticated balances struck by Victorian minds, Anger's own narrative exemplifies the double embrace of epistemological doubt and ethical commitment that she traces through the nineteenth century."

Rosemarie Bodenheimer

"Victorian Interpretation is a wonderfully bold, erudite, and bracing rethinking of Victorian intellectual method. In charting the emergence of a general hermeneutics in nineteenth-century Britain, Suzy Anger offers pointed revaluations of major Victorian thinkers and Victorian thought generally, and deftly underscores their relevance to the way we interpret now. This is a book that should engage historians and theorists alike."

James Eli Adams