The CRISIS OF ACTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTU

Description:

"We think of the nineteenth century as an active age - the age of colonial expansion, revolutions, and railroads, of great exploration and the Great Exhibition. But in reading the works of Romantic and Victorian writers one notices a conflict, what Stefanie Markovits terms "a crisis of action." In her book, The Crisis of Action in Nineteenth-Century English Literature, Markovits maps out this conflict by focusing on four writers: William Wordsworth, Arthur Hugh Clough, George Eliot, and Henry James. Each chapter offers a "case-study" that demonstrates how specific historical contingencies - including reaction to the French Revolution, laissez-faire economic practices, changes in religious and scientific beliefs, and shifts in women's roles - made people in the period hypersensitive to the status of action and its literary co-relative, plot."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: English literature,  History and criticism,  Literature and society,  History,  National characteristics, British, in literature,  Character in literature,  English literature, history and criticism, 19th century,  Characters and characteristics in literature,  English literature--history and criticism,  English literature--19th century--history and criticism,  Literature and society--history,  Literature and society--great britain--history--19th century,  Pr451 .m35 2006,  820.9/358