04343nam 2200733 a 450 991078493180332120200520144314.01-282-75401-797866127540120-226-26154-910.7208/9780226261546(CKB)2670000000034612(EBL)574742(OCoLC)662453120(SSID)ssj0000518412(PQKBManifestationID)12164957(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000518412(PQKBWorkID)10492231(PQKB)10425728(SSID)ssj0000420208(PQKBManifestationID)11327377(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000420208(PQKBWorkID)10392484(PQKB)11728227(StDuBDS)EDZ0000117445(MiAaPQ)EBC574742(DE-B1597)523113(OCoLC)1135578064(DE-B1597)9780226261546(Au-PeEL)EBL574742(CaPaEBR)ebr10412038(CaONFJC)MIL275401(EXLCZ)99267000000003461220051220d2006 uy 0engur|n|---|||||txtccrThe ideas in things[electronic resource] fugitive meaning in the Victorian novel /Elaine FreedgoodChicago University of Chicago Press20061 online resource (208 p.)Description based upon print version of record.0-226-26155-7 0-226-26163-8 Includes bibliographical references (p. [159]-186) and index.Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Reading Things -- 1. Souvenirs of Sadism: Mahogany Furniture, Deforestation, and Slavery in Jane Eyre -- 2. Coziness and Its Vicissitudes: Checked Curtains and Global Cotton Markets in Mary Barton -- 3. Realism, Fetishism, and Genocide: Negro Head Tobacco in and around Great Expectations -- 4. Toward a History of Literary Underdetermination: Standardizing Meaning in Middlemarch -- Coda: Victorian Thing Culture and the Way We Read Now -- Notes -- IndexWhile the Victorian novel famously describes, catalogs, and inundates the reader with things, the protocols for reading it have long enjoined readers not to interpret most of what crowds its pages. The Ideas in Things explores apparently inconsequential objects in popular Victorian texts to make contact with their fugitive meanings. Developing an innovative approach to analyzing nineteenth-century fiction, Elaine Freedgood here reconnects the things readers unwittingly ignore to the stories they tell. Building her case around objects from three well-known Victorian novels-the mahogany furniture in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, the calico curtains in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, and "Negro head" tobacco in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations-Freedgood argues that these things are connected to histories that the novels barely acknowledge, generating darker meanings outside the novels' symbolic systems. A valuable contribution to the new field of object studies in the humanities, The Ideas in Things pushes readers' thinking about things beyond established concepts of commodity and fetish. English fiction19th centuryHistory and criticismMaterial culture in literatureMaterial cultureGreat BritainHistory19th centurything theory, victorian, literature, great expectations, charles dickens, tobacco, negro head, mary barton, elizabeth gaskell, calico curtains, jane eyre, charlotte bronte, furniture, mahogany, sadism, power, violence, control, hierarchy, colonialism, slavery, plantation, deforestation, cozy, domesticity, cotton markets, capitalism, middlemarch, george eliot, genocide, fetishism, realism, novel, nonfiction, material culture, objects.English fictionHistory and criticism.Material culture in literature.Material cultureHistory823/.8093553Freedgood Elaine1531330MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910784931803321The ideas in things3793317UNINA