The dream life of citizens [[electronic resource] ] : late Victorian novels and the fantasy of the state / / Zarena Aslami

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910788679003321
• Autore: Aslami Zarena
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, : Fordham University Press, 2012
• ISBN: 0-8232-4203-X; 0-8232-4660-4
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (199 p.)
• Disciplina: 823/.8093581
• Soggetti: English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism; Politics and literature - Great Britain - History - 19th century; Social problems in literature; State, The, in literature; Afghanistan In literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Introduction : the lyricism of the State -- An imperial origin story : aloof rule in Schreiner's The story of an African farm -- "Rather a geographical expression than a country" : State fantasy and the production of Victorian Afghanistan -- The rise of The State as a sympathetic liberal subject in Hardy's The woodlanders -- The space of optimism : State fantasy and the case of Gissing's The odd women -- Hysterical citizenship in Grand's The heavenly twins -- Coda.
• Sommario/riassunto: Scholars have long argued that nations, as imagined communities, are constituted through the incitement of feelings and the operations of fantasy. Can we say the same about the set of disciplinary and regulatory institutions that we call the state? Can we think of it as constituted by feelings and fantasies, too? Zarena Aslami argues that late Victorian novels certainly did. Revisiting major works by Olive Schreiner, Thomas Hardy, and George Gissing, among others, Aslami shows how novels dramatized the feelings and fantasies of a culture that was increasingly optimistic, as well as increasingl