Title: Transimperial Negotiations and Cultural Anxieties from the Sensation Novel to the Adventure Story
Author(s): Dr Robert McParland, Professor of English, Felician University, Rutherford, New Jersey, USA
Publication InformationTitle: Transimperial Negotiations and Cultural Anxieties from the Sensation Novel to the Adventure Story
Author(s): Dr Robert McParland, Professor of English, Felician University, Rutherford, New Jersey, USA
Journal Title: Palimpsest - East Delta University Journal of English Studies
Volume No: 02, Issue No: 01, Year: 2020, Pages: 01-09
Publisher: Department of English, East Delta University, Chattogram, Bangladesh
Type of Publication: Research Article
Received: 18 August 2020, Accepted: 03 January 2021, Published: 07 December 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46603/pedujes.v2i1.1
Abstract
The sensation novels of the 1860s expressed the anxieties of the age, challenged realism, and sought to revive wonder. Within the transformations of modernity, these novels were read and exchanged across the British Empire. Sensation fiction mixed romance and realism and its sensational elements reflected modern tensions and concerns. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret probed the sources of violence, the cultural measures of sanity, and underscored the transgressions of an oppressed female figure in her search for freedom. Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White likewise challenged cultural certainties, as he observed the expanding popular reading audience. The rise of the adventure story within the imperial designs of colonization expressed a sense of mystery and an encounter with otherness that is interrogated here.
The sensation novels of the 1860s expressed the anxieties of the age, challenged realism, and sought to revive wonder. Within the transformations of modernity, these novels were read and exchanged across the British Empire. Sensation fiction mixed romance and realism and its sensational elements reflected modern tensions and concerns. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret probed the sources of violence, the cultural measures of sanity, and underscored the transgressions of an oppressed female figure in her search for freedom. Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White likewise challenged cultural certainties, as he observed the expanding popular reading audience. The rise of the adventure story within the imperial designs of colonization expressed a sense of mystery and an encounter with otherness that is interrogated here.
Keywords
sensation novel, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, mystery, anxiety, India
sensation novel, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, mystery, anxiety, India
References
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Bakhtin, M. (1983). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas PressBall, C. (2005). History of the Indian Mutiny (1858). New Delhi: Master Publications, 1981; Lahore: Sang-e-meel.Braddon, M.E. (2003). Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). New York: Broadview Press.__________. (2009) Aurora Floyd (1863). Oxford: Oxford University Press. __________. (2009) John Marchmont’s Legacy (1863). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Brantlinger, P. (1988). Rule of Darkness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Bronte, C. (2006). Jane Eyre. London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1847. New York: Penguin Classics.Collins, W. (2003). Woman in White (1860). New York: Penguin Classics.__________ (1999). The Moonstone (1868). New York: Penguin Classics.__________. “The Unknown Public,” Household Words (August 21, 1858).Dallas, E.S. (2002) The Gay Science (1866). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Dickens, C. (1995). Letter, 1859. The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1856-1858. Pilgrim Edition. Vol. 8. ed. Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fogel, A. (1985). Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gibney, R. (1858). My Escape from the Mutineers in Oudh. London: R. Bentley.Gissing, G. (2002). New Grub Street. London: Elder and Company, 1891; New York: New Modern Library.Haggard, H.R. (2008). King Solomon’s Mines (1885). New York: Penguin.__________. (2001) She (1886). New York: Penguin.Harris, Mrs. J.A. (1858) Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow. London: J. Murray. Hughes, W. (1980). The Maniac in the Cellar: The Sensation Novels of the 1960s. Princeton: Princeton University Press.James, L. (1994). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Boston and New York: Little, Brown.Joshi, P. (2002). In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India. New York: Columbia University Press.Marryat, F. (2009). Love’s Conflict (1865). Whitefish, MT.: Kessinger Publishing.Nayder, L. (2000) “Rebellious Sepoys and Bigamous Wives: The Indian Mutiny and Marriage Law Reform,” Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Beyond Sensation. ed. Marlene Tromp, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Aeron Hainy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Oliphant, M. “Sensation Novels” Blackwoods, XCI (May 1862): 565.Reynolds, G.W.M. (2012) The Mysteries of London. (1845) Richmond: Valancourt Books.Schlicke, P. (1985). Dickens and Popular Entertainment. London and New York: Routledge.Schneer, J. (1999). London 1900. New Haven: Yale University Press.Thompson, M. (1859). The Story of Cawnpore. London: R. Bentley.Trevelyan, G. (1865). Cawnpore (1865). London: Macmillan.
Transimperial Negotiations and Cultural Anxieties_pedujes.v2i1.pdf