Book contents
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: ‘Knowledge Made for Cutting’
- Chapter 1 Mermaids Amongst the Cables: The Abstracted Body and the Telegraphic Touch in the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 2 Enclosing Forms, Opening Spaces: The 1880s Fixed-Verse Revival
- Chapter 3 ‘The Newest Culte’: Victorian Poetry and the Literary Societies of the 1880s
- Chapter 4 The Time of W.E. Henley: ‘Minor Poetry’ and the 1880s
- Chapter 5 The Evolution of Point of View
- Chapter 6 Network, History, Method: Andrew Lang in and after the 1880s
- Chapter 7 Animated Conversations: Form, Transformation and the Category of the Novel in the 1880s
- Chapter 8 Henry James, Vulgarity and Transatlantic Moderation
- Chapter 9 He and She: The 1880s, Camp Aesthetics and the Literary Magazine
- Chapter 10 Men, Women and Horses: Public Spectacle in 1887
- Chapter 11 The Secular Turn in British Literature of the 1880s
- Index
Chapter 7 - Animated Conversations: Form, Transformation and the Category of the Novel in the 1880s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2019
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: ‘Knowledge Made for Cutting’
- Chapter 1 Mermaids Amongst the Cables: The Abstracted Body and the Telegraphic Touch in the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 2 Enclosing Forms, Opening Spaces: The 1880s Fixed-Verse Revival
- Chapter 3 ‘The Newest Culte’: Victorian Poetry and the Literary Societies of the 1880s
- Chapter 4 The Time of W.E. Henley: ‘Minor Poetry’ and the 1880s
- Chapter 5 The Evolution of Point of View
- Chapter 6 Network, History, Method: Andrew Lang in and after the 1880s
- Chapter 7 Animated Conversations: Form, Transformation and the Category of the Novel in the 1880s
- Chapter 8 Henry James, Vulgarity and Transatlantic Moderation
- Chapter 9 He and She: The 1880s, Camp Aesthetics and the Literary Magazine
- Chapter 10 Men, Women and Horses: Public Spectacle in 1887
- Chapter 11 The Secular Turn in British Literature of the 1880s
- Index
Summary
This chapter considers the role of form in debates related to the reconfiguration of novel’s place in the 1880s literary field. To do so it turns to three cultural debates underpinned by questions of form: the distinction between the healthy and the unhealthy house in relation to the International Health Exhibition (1884); the distinction between healthy and unhealthy novels in a series of 1884 essays on the novel by Walter Besant, Henry James, and George Moore respectively; and the distinction between healthy and unhealthy novels in relation to print censorship and the Henry Vizetelly trial and debates (1888-89). Taken together, these debates illuminate how form was reconfigured for the reading public in the 1880s to at once enhance and challenge the role of the novel as a vital and consequential social force. They also illustrate the ways in which frameworks for evaluation were tested, explored and refined in ways that continue to reverberate for literary studies today.
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- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s , pp. 139 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019