Description
Originally published in 1999, Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque is the first fully interdisciplinary study of the subject and examines a wide range of sources and materials to provide new readings between ‘style’ and ‘concept’. The book provides an original analysis of key articulations of the Grotesque in the literary culture of Ruskin, Browning and Dickens, where represents the eruptions, intensities, confusions and disturbed vitality of modern cultural experience such as the scientific revolution associated with Darwin and the nature of industrial society.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction: Uncovering the Grotesque in Victorian Culture
1. ‘Borrowing Gargantua’s Mouth: Biography, Bahktin and Grotesque Discourse – James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle and Leslie Stephen on Samuel Johnson, David Amigoni
2. Thomas Carlyle’s Grotesque Conceits, Paul Barlow
3. Culture and Energy: Ford Maddox Brown, Thomas Carlyle and Cromwellian Grotesque, Colin Trodd
4. ‘Griffinism, Grace and All’: The Riddle of the Grotesque in John Ruskin’s Modern Painters, Lucy Hartley
5. Grotesque Obscenities: Thomas Woolner’s Civilization and its Discontents, Paul Barlow
6. ‘Entangled Banks’: Robert Browning, Richard Dadd and the Darwinian Grotesque, Nicola Bown
7. Monsters and Monstrosities: Grotesque Taste and Victorian Design, Shelagh Wilson
8. Turning Back the Grotsque: G.F. Watts, the Matter of Painting and the Oblivion of Art, Colin Trodd
Bibliography
Index
