Working Fictions , livre ebook

285

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

Écrit par
Lesjak Carolyn Lesjak

Publié par
Duke University Press

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285

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

18 janvier 2007

EAN13

9780822388340

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

Working Fictions takes as its point of departure the common and painful truth that the vast majority of human beings toil for a wage and rarely for their own enjoyment or satisfaction. In this striking reconceptualization of Victorian literary history, Carolyn Lesjak interrogates the relationship between labor and pleasure, two concepts that were central to the Victorian imagination and the literary output of the era. Through the creation of a new genealogy of the "labor novel," Lesjak challenges the prevailing assumption about the portrayal of work in Victorian fiction, namely that it disappears with the fall from prominence of the industrial novel. She proposes that the "problematic of labor" persists throughout the nineteenth century and continues to animate texts as diverse as Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, George Eliot's Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and the essays and literary work of William Morris and Oscar Wilde.Lesjak demonstrates how the ideological work of the literature of the Victorian era, the "golden age of the novel," revolved around separating the domains of labor and pleasure and emphasizing the latter as the proper realm of literary representation. She reveals how the utopian works of Morris and Wilde grapple with this divide and attempt to imagine new relationships between work and pleasure, relationships that might enable a future in which work is not the antithesis of pleasure. In Working Fictions, Lesjak argues for the contemporary relevance of the "labor novel," suggesting that within its pages lie resources with which to confront the gulf between work and pleasure that continues to characterize our world today.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

18 janvier 2007

EAN13

9780822388340

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

WORKING FICTIONS

POST-

CONTEMPORARY

INTERVENTIONS

Series Editors:

Stanley Fish and

Fredric Jameson

CAROLYN LESJ AK

WORKING FICTIONS

A Genealogy

of theVictorian

Novel

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS DURHAM AND LONDON 2006

Printed in the United States

of America on acid-free paper 

Typeset in Adobe Caslon by Tseng

Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data and republication

acknowledgments appear on the

last printed page of

this book.

For my sister Susan and my mom Doris

CONTENTS

........................

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: A Genealogy of the Labor Novel 

PART I ealism Meets the Masses

. ‘‘How Deep Might Be the Romance’’: Representing Work and the Working Class in Elizabeth Gaskell’sMary Barton

. A Modern Odyssey:Felix Holt’s Education for the Masses 

PART II Coming of ge in a World Economy

. Seeing the Invisible: TheBildungsromanand the Narration of a New Regime of Accumulation 

PART III Itineraries of the Utopian

. William Morris and a People’s Art: Reimagining the Pleasures of Labor 

. Utopia, Use, and the Everyday: Oscar Wilde and a New Economy of Pleasure 

Conclusion 

Notes 

Bibliography 

Index 

viii



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

........................

I hope that Eric Hoﬀer is right: that ‘‘what counts most is holding on.’’ This book has been with me a long time; its beginning and end marked by two deaths: my sister’s and my mother’s. Fortunately, its writing has also been a time of much life, the peaks of which have been the birth of my daughter, Sophie, and the arrival, just recently, of Mia from China. That life also in-cludes the constant love and encouragement of my father, V. James Lesjak, and my sister, Catherine Lesjak, for which I am grateful. I thank most of all my mentors at Duke. I feel lucky to have been a gradu-ate student before the drive to professionalization was in full swing. My advisor Eve Sedgwick deﬁnes for me real scholarly love and my other com-mittee members—Fredric Jameson, Toril Moi, Michael Hardt, and Clyde Ryals—have served as models of intellectual integrity and political engage-ment who are always before me in my own work. Many thanks too to the crew at  Clarendon, the Marxist reading group, and the current Summer Institute—these, to me, represent the heart of the collective spirit neces-sary for sustaining good work. Martin Hipsky is also part of this spirit; his reading of many drafts helped me immensely. I also feel lucky to have gotten to know Nancy Armstrong and Amanda Anderson early on in my career. They have both been incredibly generous with their time and advice and their support has been incalculable. This book would also be a far lesser thing but for the tireless help of my colleagues Betsy Bolton and Nora Johnson. Especially down the stretch, their encouragement and criticism (perfectly dosed) has been invaluable. Thanks, too, to Swarthmore College for leave support and to my students for providing a great environment in which to teach and learn. Many thanks

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