Combining analysis of Victorian literature and culture with forceful
theoretical argument, The Powers of Distance examines the progressive
potential of those forms of cultivated detachment associated with
Enlightenment and modern thought. Amanda Anderson explores a range of
practices in nineteenth-century British culture, including methods of
objectivity in social science, practices of omniscience in artistic
realism, and the complex forms of affiliation in Victorian
cosmopolitanism. Anderson demonstrates that many writers--including
George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Brontë, Matthew Arnold, and
Oscar Wilde--thoughtfully address the challenging moral questions that
attend stances of detachment. In so doing, she offers a revisionist
account of Victorian culture and a tempered defense of detachment as
an ongoing practice and aspiration. The Powers of Distance illuminates
its historical object of study and provides a powerful example for its
theoretical argument, showing that an ideal of critical detachment
underlies the ironic modes of modernism and postmodernism as well as
the tradition of Enlightenment thought and critical theory. Its broad
understanding of detachment and cultivated distance, together with its
focused historical analysis, will appeal to theorists and critics
across the humanities, particularly those working in literary and
cultural studies, feminism, and postcolonialism. Original in scope and
thesis, this book constitutes a major contribution to literary history
and contemporary theory.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780691188065
Publisert
2018
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter