Overview

A bold study on the very epicentre of Victorian ideology: the white, male body The Victorian Male Body examines some of the main expressions and practices of Victorian masculinity and its embodied physicality. The white, and frequently middle class, male body was often normalised as the epitome of Victorian values. Whilst there has been a long and fruitful discussion around the concept of the 'too-visible' body of the colonised subject and the expectations placed on women's bodies, the idealised male body has received less attention in scholarly discussions. Through its examination of a broad range of Victorian literary and cultural texts, this new collection opens up a previously neglected field of study with a scrutinising focus on what is arguably the ideologically most important body in Victorian society. This collection provides a wide variety of essays on different aspects of Victorian literature and culture, considering the variety of forms that this 'idealised' male body actually encompassed: fat, starving or disabled bodies, the ghostly figure, the 'othered' body, and the developing body of the schoolboy. The chapters in this book offer a detailed and clear reassessment of the Victorian concepts of manliness, masculinity, homosociality, morality, action, and adventure. Key Features Provides a wide variety of essays on different aspects of Victorian literature and culture with subjects ranging from nature poetry, disability and pirates, fat and thin men, ghost soldiers and popular magazinesOpens up a neglected field of study with a scrutinizing focus on the ideologically most important body in Victorian societyAllows a re-evaluation of other areas of Victorian culture such as colonialism and debates about class, religion and scienceEnables a detailed and clear reassessment of the Victorian concepts of manliness, masculinity, homosociality, morality, action, and adventure

Full Product Details

Author:   Joanne Ella Parsons (Lecturer, Bath Spa University) ,  Ruth Heholt
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Weight:   0.549kg
ISBN:  

9781474428606

ISBN 10:   1474428606
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   28 March 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Visible and Invisible Bodies, Ruth Heholt and Joanne Ella Parsons I. Constructed Bodies Violent Play and Regular Discipline: The Abuses of the Schoolboy Body in Victorian Fiction, Alice Crossley Punishing the unregulated manly body and emotions in early Victorian England, Joanne Begiato The New Man’s Body in Ménie Muriel Dowie’s Gallia, Tara MacDonald II. Fractured and Fragmented Bodies Pirates and Prosthetics: Manly Messages for Managing Limb Loss in Victorian and Edwardian Adventure Narratives, Ryan Sweet Tuberculosis and Visionary Sensibility: The Consumptive Body as Masculine Dissent in George Eliot and Henry James, Meredith Miller Monstrous Masculinities from the Macaroni to the Masher: Reading the Gothic ‘Gentleman’, Alison Younger Visible Yet Immaterial: The Phantom and the Male Body in Ghost Stories by Three Victorian Women Writers, Ruth Heholt III. Unruly Bodies Aesthetics of Deviance: George du Maurier's Representations of the Artist's Body for Punch as Discourse on Manliness, 1870-1880, Françoise Baillet Suffering, Asceticism and the Starving Male Body in Mary Barton, Charlotte Boyce Fosco’s Fat: Transgressive Consumption and Bodily Control in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Joanne Ella Parsons Sensationalizing Otherness: The Italian Male Body in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s ‘Olivia’ and ‘Garibaldi’, Anne-Marie Beller

Reviews

Scholars and researchers of Victorian literature and culture will find this book useful, engaging, and beneficial as it reveals the complexity and diversity of men along with their anxieties, fears, desires, impulses, and transgressions.--Lacey Sparks, University of Southern Maine Victorian Studies, 2019

Author Information

Joanne Ella Parsons is Lecturer at Bath Spa University. She is the editor of the Wilkie Collins journal, and her publications include Muller, N and J. Parsons (eds.) Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Special Issue: The Male Body in Victorian Literature and Culture 36.4 (September 2014) and Parsons, Joanne Ella. ‘Surtees’ ‘Eating Englishness and Causing Chaos: Food and the Body of the Fat Man in R. S. Surtees’ Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities, Handley Cross and Hillingdon Hall’ Nineteenth-Century Contexts 36.4 (September 2014). Ruth Heholt is Senior Lecturer in English at Falmouth University. Her publications include edited scholarly edition of The Story of Lilly Dawson, by Catherine Crowe (Victorian Secrets Press, 2015), Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment Ruth Heholt and Niamh Downing (eds), (Rowman Littlefield), and Gothic Localities: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles, Ruth Heholt and William Hughes (eds), (University of Wales Press).

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