This book shows how Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot sacralized Victorian modernity in two contradictory ways: by incarnating their moment as one of transcendent development, and by reenacting bloody rituals from a fading Protestant past. Both the magnitude and the brevity of their success make these works exemplary for our own era, caught between the archaic gods of traditional religion and the still-mysterious ones of market society.
Author(s): David Payne
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 224
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 9
Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 10
List of Abbreviations......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
1 The Cockney and the Prostitute: Dickens from Sketches by Boz to Oliver Twist......Page 35
2 The Pathos of Distance: Thackeray, Serialization, and Vanity Fair......Page 59
3 Dickens Breaks Out: the Public Readings and Little Dorrit......Page 84
4 A Dance of Indecision: George Eliot’s Shorter Fiction......Page 110
5 The Production of Belief: the Serial, Middlemarch......Page 137
Epilogue: The Sacred Monster: the Serial Novelists’ Reenchantment......Page 160
Notes......Page 168
Bibliography......Page 198
D......Page 217
E......Page 218
M......Page 219
T......Page 220
Z......Page 221
