Theatricality and Performance in Victorian Literature and Culture

Performance and theatricality have become key terms for scholars working across wide reaches of Victorian studies. Closely related and multiply resonant as they are, I will not attempt to disentangle them here. Thomas Postlewait and Tracy Davis in defining just one of these terms suggest that:

the idea of theatricality has achieved an extraordinary range of meanings, making it everything from an act to an attitude, a style to a semiotic system, a medium to a message. It is a sign empty of meaning; it is the meaning of all signs. Depending on one's perspective, it can be dismissed as little more than a self-referential gesture or it can be embraced as a definitive feature of human communication. Although it obviously derives its meanings from the world of theatre, theatricality can be abstracted from the theatre itself and then applied to any and all aspects of human life.

We see how richly useful and widely usable these terms are in the diverse approaches demonstrated by the work gathered in this issue of Victorian Network. These are not articles purely about the theatre but they do recognise the importance, both metaphorically and literally, of theatricality and performance in a number of areas of nineteenth-century culture and society.  Read the full text here

(Cover image scanned by George P. Landow.)

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Crossing the Line: Affinities Before and After 1900

Regenia Gagnier
(University of Exeter; President, British Association for Victorian Studies)

It is with great pleasure that I write the Preface to this special issue of the AHRC-funded Victorian Network journal, as the President of the British Association for Victorian Studies, with its over 700+ international membership, and as the keynote speaker at the conference from which the papers were selected, "Crossing the Line" of 28-29th January 2010 at the University of Liverpool. My keynote lecture, "Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: on the Relationship of Part to Whole: 1880-1920," was in part subsequently published as an Appendix on J. K. Huysmans to my book Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: on the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and I owe the conference organizers and Professor Mark Llewellyn a debt for their comments and criticisms after the lecture. ... Read the full text here

(Cover image © Stuart Keates 2011)

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Introduction: Victorian Literature and Science

Ian Henderson
(King's College London)

On 5 April 2010 the New York Times sponsored a debate in its online pages: 'Can "Neuro Lit Crit" Save the Humanities?'. The question rose from an earlier article in the same paper on the 'Next Big Thing in English' (31 March 2010), outlining work by (among others) Professor Linda Zunshine (University of Kentucky) which merges eighteenth-century literary studies and evolutionary psychology, referencing Professor Elaine Scarry's seminars on 'Cognitive Psychology and the Arts' at Harvard, and highlighting a project at Yale led by Emeritus Professor Michael Holquist which uses MRI scans to explore the mental functioning involved in reading complex texts. Behind these projects, it was claimed, there was recognition that

science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature's very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?

Science, apparently, could also 'prove' the advantages for cognitive development of reading literature (part of its 'saving' function; it makes literary study 'relevant' to mental health) and there followed the startling suggestion that literary history might make manifest psychological evolution in humans.

Naturally the framing of the article and subsequent question for debate prompted critical responses, ... Read the full text here

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Victorian Network: Guest Editor's Introduction

Muireann Ó Cinnéide
(University of Galway)

It is a great pleasure for me to introduce the first issue of this exciting new journal, Victorian Network. The journal, with generous support from the AHRC, provides a central forum for postgraduate students to publish their work, offering an important insight into the cutting-edge of Victorian Studies at the present time. The title Victorian Network represents Victorian culture in terms of interconnectivity rather than discrete ideas, disciplines and institutions. Links in the period between literature, history, painting, religion and science have been well-explored, but what ‘Network’ highlights, it seems to me, is a more interactive, vibrant, and essentially socialised sense of structures of connection. It also speaks to the value of facilitating Victorianist networks. The production of the journal itself brings together an editorial team of postgraduate students, working with a different guest editor for each issue, and will continue to involve new generations of postgraduate students in its development. Read the full text here

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