Description
Book SynopsisCombining analysis of Victorian literature and culture with theoretical argument, this title examines the progressive potential of those forms of cultivated detachment associated with Enlightenment and modern thought. It explores a range of practices in nineteenth-century British culture, including methods of objectivity in social science.
Trade Review"The Powers of Distance ... consistently delivers the double payoff of enriched views on both Victorian texts and contemporary debates."--Victorian Studies
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Forms of Detachment 3 Chapter One: Gender, Modernity, and Detachment Domestic Ideas and the Case of Charlotte Bronte's Villette 34 Chapter Two: Cosmopolitanism in Different Voices Charles Dicken's Little Dorrit and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion 63 Chapter Three: Disinterestedness as a Vocation Revisisting Matthew Arnold 91 Chapter Four: The Cultivation of Partiality George Eliot and the Jewish Question 119 Chapter Five: "Manners Before Morals" Oscar Wilde and Epigrammatic Detachment 147 Conclusion: The Character of Theory 177 Bibliography 181 Index 193
