Literature and Revolution

British Responses to the Paris Commune of 1871

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

AvOwen Holland

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Between March and May 1871, the Parisian Communards fought for a revolutionary alternative to the status quo grounded in a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. The eventual defeat and bloody suppression of the Commune resonated far beyond Paris. In Britain, the Commune provoked widespread and fierce condemnation, while its defenders constituted a small, but vocal, minority. The Commune evoked long-standing fears about the continental 'spectre' of revolution, not least because the Communards' seizure of power represented an embryonic alternative to the bourgeois social order. This book examines how a heterogeneous group of authors in Britain responded to the Commune. In doing so, it provides the first full-length critical study of the reception and representation of the Commune in Britain during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, showing how discussions of the Commune functioned as a screen to project hope and fear, serving as a warning for some and an example to others. Writers considered in the book include John Ruskin, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Margaret Oliphant, George Gissing, Henry James, William Morris, Alfred Austin and H.G. Wells. As the book shows, many, but not all, of these writers responded to the Commune with literary strategies that sought to stabilize bourgeois subjectivity in the wake of the traumatic shock of a revolutionary event. The book extends critical understanding of the Commune's cultural afterlives and explores the relationship between literature and revolution.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-03-18
Mått152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt463 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor268
FörlagRutgers University Press
ISBN9781978829855

Tillhör följande kategorier

Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
Revolutioner och uppror inom Historia och arkeologi
Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
Historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Europas historia inom Historia och arkeologi

Preface1 Introduction: A Commune in Literature2 Refugees, Renegades, and Misrepresentation: Edward Bulwer Lytton and Eliza Lynn Linton3 Dangerous Sympathies: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and Margaret Oliphant4 "Dreams of the Coming Revolution": George Gissing's Workers in the Dawn5 Revolution and Ressentiment: Henry James's The Princess Casamassima6 The Uses of Tragedy: Alfred Austin's The Human Tragedy and William Morris's The Pilgrims of Hope7 "It Had to Come Back": H. G. Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes8 Conclusion: Looking without SeeingAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliography

"[An] admirable volume . . . . Holland is impressively consistent in his own particular methodology, enabling fresh local readings of individual texts and a convincing overview that offers an integrated, politically revealing interpretation of a relatively discrete literary phenomenon. . . . Particularly interesting is the way Holland extends the historical work of Carolyn J. Eichner and Gay Gullickson on the role of women during the Commune, perhaps exemplified by the magnificent Louise Michel (1830–1905)."— Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy"[An] adroit study. . . . Literature and Revolution features a fascinating and capacious archive of newspaper and periodical reportage, illustrations, poetry, and a surprisingly large corpus of popular novels in which the Commune 'served as their backdrop.'"— Victorian StudiesThis timely book explores the Paris Commune's reverberations in Victorian literature, offering spirited readings of the many popular and canonical British writers who sought to contain (or revivify) it. The result is a fascinating meditation on literature and revolution which stands to make sizeable contributions to both our understanding of the Commune and late-nineteenth-century British literature and culture.— J. Michelle Coghlan, author of Sensational Internationalism: the Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in thThis superb book on the Commune's reception in late nineteenth-century Britain, which scrupulously and perceptively reconstructs the reactions of writers on both the Left and Right of the political spectrum, across a generous range of discursive forms, is a fine testament to Owen Holland's politically committed scholarship.— Matthew Beaumont, author of The Walker: On Finding and Losing Oneself in the Modern City