Geography and the literary imagination in Victorian fictions of empire : the poetics of imperial space

Bibliographic Information

Geography and the literary imagination in Victorian fictions of empire : the poetics of imperial space

Jean Fernandez

(Routledge studies in nineteenth-century literature, 57)

Routledge, 2021, c2020

  • : pbk

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Note

Originally published: 2020

"First issued in paperback 2021"--T.p. verso

Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-273) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In this pioneering study, Dr. Fernandez explores how the rise of institutional geography in Victorian England impacted imperial fiction's emergence as a genre characterized by a preoccupation with space and place. This volume argues that the alliance between institutional geography and the British empire which commenced with the founding of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830, shaped the spatial imagination of Victorians, with profound consequences for the novel of empire. Geography and the Literary Imagination in Victorian Fictions of Empire examines Presidential Addresses and reports of the Royal Geographical Society, and demonstrates how geographical studies by explorers, cartographers, ethnologists, medical topographers, administrators, and missionaries published by the RGS, local geographical societies, or the colonial state, acquired relevance for Victorian fiction's response to the British Empire. Through a series of illuminating readings of literary works by R.L. Stevenson, Olive Schreiner, Flora Annie Steel, Winwood Reade, Joseph Conrad, and Rudyard Kipling, the study demonstrates how nineteenth-century fiction, published between 1870 and 1901, reflected and interrogated geographical discourses of the time. The study makes the case for the significance of physical and human geography for literary studies, and the unique historical and aesthetic insights gained through this approach.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Desert Islands and the Conundrum of Place in R.L.Stevenson's Treasure Island. Topophilia and the Settler Experience in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. Exploring the Glocal: The Dark Continent and Global Economies in Winwood Reade's "Hollowayphobia" and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Mobile Peoples, Mutinous Subjects, and Urban Geographies in Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters. The Politics of Region and the Quandaries of Space in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. The Imperial Cure: Eventful Healing, Medical Topographies, and Casteless Utopias in Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Conclusion.

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