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The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real By Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real by Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)

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Summary

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real presents a new interpretation of the Victorian realist novel based on realism's desire for the real. In provocative readings of novels by Eliot, Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, and Collins, Jaffe redefines realist conventions and reinterprets long-held theories about realist representation.

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real Summary

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real: Conventions and Ideology by Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)

Critical discussions of the Victorian realist novel tend to focus on its vivid representations of everyday life. The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real proposes that the genre is founded in desire, moving the novels not towards a shared reality but rather toward distinct fantasies: dreams of the real. Rather than simply redefine Victorian realism or propose a new canon for it, The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real argues that the real is inevitably, for the Victorian realist novel, an object of desire: what the novel seeks to capture and represent. A novel's construction of the real is therefore inseparable from its fantasy of the real-a formulation Audrey Jaffe refers to as realist fantasy. One way in which this simultaneity manifests itself is that the conventions novels frequently use to represent characters' dreams, daydreams, and fantasies overlap with those each novel uses to create its realist effects. In new readings of Victorian novels (including Eliot's Adam Bede, Dickens's Oliver Twist, Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Return of the Native, Trollope's Orley Farm, and Wilkie Collins's Armadale), The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real demonstrates that one of the signal effects of this overlapping is Victorian realism's construction of the real as an object of readerly desire. Jaffe shows that realism and fantasy in the Victorian realist novel are not opposed, but rather occupy the same space and are shaped by the same conventions. Revisiting and reconsidering key elements of realist novel theory (including metonymy; the insignificant detail; character interiority; the representation of everyday life and the idea of disillusionment), The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real also uncovers and anatomizes representational strategies unique to each text.

The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real Reviews

By the end of this invigorating and challenging read, I had a profound admiration for Jaffe's willingness to go straight into the potentially recursive loop of realism and to give us a new picture of its driving mechanisms and the investments both our culture at large and the culture of contemporary literary criticism continue to make in this distinction. Jaffe shows that the claim to the real is always a fantasy and one that involves a claim for power. * Zarena Aslami, Novel *
The author's meticulously constructed argument compels readers to reflect on just how much their sense of the realistic has been constituted by realism's own wishful thinking. This singular intervention invites us to look up from the business of seeking out the real and directs us back to the literary source of that desire. It attunes us to how realism imagines itself as a genre and to how realist novels can help us understand the real itself as a genre or mode, a system of representational rules (p. 17). Most importantly, it illuminates an elusive question urgently worth pursuing: why is realism the form of fantasy that so many readers cannot stop dreaming about? * Elaine Auyoung, Nineteenth-Century Literature *
Anyone interested in realism in the Victorian novel should read Jaffe's book. As she addresses the idea of realism in the Victorian novel, Jaffe (Univ. of Toronto) makes the case that these novels portray desire of the real, rather than the real itself. Focusing on such classics as George Eliot's Adam Bede, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Jaffe offers often-brilliant readings that are sophisticated in their attention to detail and in their awareness of critics' earlier claims about realism...Jaffe reminds one that Victorian fiction works with the tension between fantasy and the real, and she points out that critics who try to sever the two miss that productive tension. * S. Bernardo, CHOICE *
In this witty and audacious book, Audrey Jaffe tells us what we always wanted to know about Victorian realism but were too Victorian to ask for ourselves: realism is a desire for realism rather than its realization. Like our own dreams, realist novels build an unstable fantasy of solidity through their use of elaborate narrative defenses, fulfilling our wish for realism but only so as to make reality more manageable. Jaffe's book will change the way we understand literary realism, making us desire it all over again. * Mario Ortiz-Robles, author of The Novel as Event *
Rather than debunking the Victorian novel's claim on the real, Audrey Jaffe listens to it, with an intelligence at once skeptical and sympathetic. The result is a searching revelation of how thoroughly lined with fantasy is the desire for reality, and how powerfully anchored in the real are the most luridly sensational fictions. Along the way, Jaffe deftly demonstrates how the Victorians' reality hunger continues to animate our own critical fantasies. * David Kurnick, author of Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel *
Jaffe argues that realism and fantasy overlap in the Victorian novel. Her account, showing how the period's desire to capture the real unsettles formal classifications, throws a revealing light on authors from Dickens to Virginia Woolf. * Patricia Ingham, author of The Brontes *

About Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)

Audrey Jaffe is Professor of English at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1. Realist Territory: Proscription and Prohibition in Adam Bede Chapter 2. How I Met Your Mother and Other Lucky Accidents Chapter 3. Castles in the Air: Trollope's Realist Fantasy Chapter 4. Outside the Gates of Everything: Hardy's Exclusionary Realism Chapter 5. Armadale: Sensation Fiction Dreams of the Real Chapter 6. Conclusion: Critical Desire and the Victorian Real

Additional information

GOR013961014
9780190067816
0190067810
The Victorian Novel Dreams of the Real: Conventions and Ideology by Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)
Audrey Jaffe (Professor of English, Professor of English, University of Toronto)
Used - Like New
Paperback
Oxford University Press Inc
2019-07-18
200
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
The book has been read, but looks new. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included if applicable. No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins

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