Victorian fetishism : intellectuals and primitives / / Peter Melville Logan

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910811392403321
• Autore: Logan Peter Melville <1951->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Albany, : State University of New York Press, c2009
• ISBN: 0-7914-7728-2; 1-4416-0364-6
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (221 p.)
• Collana: SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century
• Disciplina: 820.9/3552
• Soggetti: English prose literature - 19th century - History and criticism; Culture - Philosophy - History - 19th century; Criticism - Great Britain - History - 19th century; Culture in literature; Fetishism in literature; Primitivism in literature; Great Britain Intellectual life 19th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: This book examines Victorian discourse on culture.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-193) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front Matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Primitive Fetishism from Antiquity to 1860 -- Matthew Arnold’s Culture -- George Eliot’s Realism -- Edward Tylor’s Science -- Sexology’s Perversion -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Victorian Fetishism argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all "primitive" cultures with "Primitive Fetishism," a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world—thunderstorms, trees, stones—is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers ; projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby "fetishizing" fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory.