1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910454835103321

Autore

Larson Jil

Titolo

Ethics and narrative in the English novel, 1880-1914 / / Jil Larson [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2001

ISBN

1-107-12205-8

0-521-12167-1

0-511-48314-7

0-511-15371-6

1-280-17782-9

0-511-11912-7

0-511-04715-0

0-511-30353-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 176 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

823/.809353

Soggetti

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Ethics in literature

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Didactic fiction, English - History and criticism

Narration (Rhetoric) - History - 19th century

Narration (Rhetoric) - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-172) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Ethics and the turn to narrative -- Victorian history and ethics: anxiety about agency at the fin-de-siècle -- Emotion, gender, and ethics in fiction by Thomas Hardy and the New Woman writers -- When hope unblooms: chance and moral luck in A Laodicean, The mayor of Castorbridge, and Tess -- Oscar Wilde and Henry James: aestheticizing ethics -- Promises, lies, and ethical agency in Joseph Conrad's Under western eyes.

Sommario/riassunto

Drawing on interdisciplinary work in the field of ethics and literature by a diverse range of thinkers, including Martha Nussbaum, Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur, Jil Larson offers new readings of late Victorian



and turn-of-the-century British fiction, she shows how ethical concepts can transform our understanding of narratives, just as narratives make possible a valuable, contextualised moral deliberation. Focusing on novels by Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James, Larson explores the conjunction of ethics and fin-de-siècle history and culture through a consideration of what narratives from this period tell us about emotion, reason, and gender, aestheticism, and such speech acts as promising and lying. This book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth century and modernism, and all interested in the conjunction between narrative, ethics and literary theory.