Victorian Afterlives The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature [Hardcover]

Questions of survival were much discussed during the nineteenth century, ranging from debates over the likelihood of a personal immortality, to anxieties over the more dispersed and unpredictable aftermath of particular acts and utterances.Victorian Afterlivessets out to recover this atmosphere, and to explain why its pressures are still being exercised on and in our own ways of thinking. Moving freely between different fields of inquiry (including literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science), and written in a lively and accessible style, this major new study redraws the map of nineteenth-century culture to show what the Victorians made of one another, and what they might still help us make of ourselves.

Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Forms of Survival
2. Voices in the Air
3. Tennyson's Sympathy
4. Edward FitzGerald: Under the Influence
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

Ambitious, delightful.... Its sheer range sets it apart from the usual academic monograph.... Refreshingly free of jargon. --Times Literary Supplement

An intriguing study--ambitious in its scope and sceptical in its approach.... The book's openness to a large number of areas of interest and discourse is what makes it so interesting and so original. --Essays in Criticism