Neo-Victorianism, Empathy and Reading Neo-Victorianism, Empathy and Reading

Neo-Victorianism, Empathy and Reading

    • £25.99
    • £25.99

Publisher Description

In the words of J. Brooks Boustan, the empathic reader is a participant-observer, who, as they read, is both subject to the disruptive and disturbing responses that characters and texts provoke, and aware of the role they are invited to play when responding to fiction. Calling upon the writings of Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Graeme Macrae Burnet, Sarah Waters, Michael Cox and Jane Harris, this book examines the ethics of the text-reader relationship in neo-Victorian literature, focusing upon the role played by empathy in this engagement. Bringing together recent cultural and theoretical research on narrative temporality, empathy and affect, Muren Zhang presents neo-Victorian literature as a genre defined by its experimentation with 'empathetic narrative'.



Broken down into themes such as voyeurism, shame, nausea, space and place, Neo-Victorianism, Empathy and Reading argues that such literature pushes the reader to critically reflect upon their reading expectations and strategies, as well as their wider ethical responsibilities. As a result, Zhang breathes new life into the debates associated with the genre and demonstrates new ways of reading and valuing these contemporary texts, providing a future-orientated, reparative and politically meaningful way of reading neo-Victorian literature and culture.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2022
24 March
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
216
Pages
PUBLISHER
Bloomsbury Academic
SIZE
971.9
KB
Reading Bodies in Victorian Fiction Reading Bodies in Victorian Fiction
2022
Rereading Empathy Rereading Empathy
2022
Rethinking Contemporary British Women's Writing Rethinking Contemporary British Women's Writing
2021
Scenes of Intimacy Scenes of Intimacy
2013
The Post-war Novel and the Death of the Author The Post-war Novel and the Death of the Author
2020
Literary and cultural forays into the contemporary Literary and cultural forays into the contemporary
2016