Description
Book Synopsis‘William Morris and the Uses of Violence, 1856–1890’ combines a close reading of Morris’s work with historical and philosophical analysis in order to argue, contrary to prevailing critical opinion, that his writings demonstrate an enduring commitment to an ideal of violent battle. The work examines Morris’s representations of violence in relation to the wider cultural preoccupations and political movements with which they intersect, including medievalism, Teutonism, and the visionary, fractured socialism of the ‘fin de siècle’.
Trade Review‘Hanson’s work is certainly intriguing, bespeaks a careful study of a range of Morris texts, and has a refreshingly unexpected way into texts about which the critical consensus may have been too quick to form.’ —John Plotz, ‘Pre-Raphaelite Studies’
‘Hanson gracefully and effectively situates her subject – Morris and violence — within various fields including Victorian literature, Greek, Roman, and Nordic cultures, psychology, and a wide range of political and critical theorists […] Morris and the Uses of Violence so effectively moves among the multiple fields upon which Hanson draws that if I were still teaching my old introductory seminar to postgraduate study – the once-standard methods course — I would direct students to it as an example of how to conduct complex scholarly and critical arguments, particularly those that contradict orthodox received views of a subject’ —George P. Landow, editor-in-chief, www.victorianweb.org
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction: Warriors Waiting for the Word; Chapter One: The Early Romances and the Transformative Touch of Violence; Chapter Two: Knightly Women and the Imagination of Battle in ‘The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems ‘; Chapter Three: ‘Sigurd the Volsung’ and the Parameters of Manliness; Chapter Four: Crossing the River of Violence: The Germanic Antiwars and the Uncivilized Uses of Work and Play; Chapter Five: ‘All for the Cause’: Fellowship, Sacrifice and Fruitful War; Afterword: ‘Hopeful Strife and Blameless Peace’; Notes; Bibliography; Index
