Manchester University Press Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century

This book makes a timely intervention in current critical contexts for the study of nineteenth-century literature within the academy and beyond. It both reflects on and contributes to emergent critical trends, employing case studies of individual texts, authors, transactions and performances to rethink particular aspects of nineteenth-century literature and culture and to address key questions raised by the study of the period. Individual chapters explore how best to locate and demarcate the period, the dissemination of texts and ideas around the globe, the appropriation of the nineteenth century by modern and post-modern culture, and nineteenth-century literature as a vital space where different disciplines, identities and materialities interact. Topics discussed include science and technology, poetry and philosophy, the Gothic, anatomical exhibitions, the global spread of liberalism, Anglo-American publishing, Punjabi popular culture, and the neo-Victorian in literature, film and performance. By bringing together a broad range of intellectually challenging perspectives, Interventions offers an engaging critical overview of the field of nineteenth-century literary studies. It will appeal both to scholars working within the field and students and teachers encountering this fascinating area of study for the first time.