Annoying the Victorians

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 1995 - 271 pages
What happens when bad criticism happens to good people? Annoying the Victorians sets the tradition of critical discourse and literary criticism on its ear, as well as a few other areas. James Kincaid brings his witty, erudite and thoroughly cynical self to the Victorians, and they will never read (or be read) quite the same. In a series of essays covering the "hit parade" of the Victorians--Tennyson, Dickens, Meredith, Hardy and the erotic poetry of The Pearl --Kincaid creates a sharp, insicive parody of the methods of good criticism (and sometimes the practicioners,) all the while raising questions about what "good criticism" is, and how these rules serve to maintain the status quo. Annoying the Victorians mocks those conventions held dear, and examines the sacredness of "the text," the employment of evidence, the construction of sound arguments, and the solemn tone in which the discipline is practiced, showing them all for smoke and mirrors, exposing the Wizard behind the curtain of critical practice. Throughout, James Kincaid amuses, prods, provokes and enlightens the reader with a machete-like directness couched in satire. The essays will surely annoy both Victorians and Victorianists alike, as well as those worshipping at the church of Literary Criticism.

From inside the book

Contents

Fattening Up on Pickwick
21
Little NellShe Dead
35
Viewing and Blurring with Dickens
47
4
69
Performance Roles the Self and Our Own Charles Dickens
75
Who Is Relieved by the Idea of Comic Relief?
91
Tennysons Happy Losses
99
Tennyson Hallams Corpse Miltons Murder
113
H Rider Haggards The Return of She An Explication
169
Anthony Trollope and the Unmannerly Novel
207
The Power of Barchester Towers
225
Notes
255
Index
269
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About the author (1995)

James Kincaid is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture, (1992).

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