MARC Record from harvard_bibliographic_metadata

LEADER: 03913cam a2200457 a 4500
001 010237943-2
005 20070226120119.0
008 060328s2006 ncu b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2006010447
015 $aGBA674934$2bnb
016 7 $a013542061$2Uk
020 $a0822338351 (cloth : alk. paper)
020 $a9780822338352 (cloth : alk. paper)
020 $a0822338882 (pbk. : alk. paper)
020 $a9780822338888 (pbk. : alk. paper)
035 0 $aocm65819869
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dBAKER$dUKM$dBTCTA$dC#P$dYDXCP
050 00 $aPR871$b.L47 2006
082 00 $a823/.009355$222
100 1 $aLesjak, Carolyn,$d1963-
245 10 $aWorking fictions :$ba genealogy of the Victorian novel /$cCarolyn Lesjak.
260 $aDurham :$bDuke University Press,$c2006.
300 $ax, 270 p. ;$c24 cm.
440 0 $aPost-contemporary interventions
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [251]-261) and index.
520 $a"Working Fictions takes as its point of departure the common and painful truth that the vast majority of human beings toil for a wage and rarely for their own enjoyment or satisfaction. In this striking reconceptualization of Victorian literary history, Carolyn Lesjak interrogates the relationship between labor and pleasure, two concepts that were central to the Victorian imagination and the literary output of the era. Through the creation of a new genealogy of the "labor novel," Lesjak challenges the prevailing assumption about the portrayal of work in Victorian fiction, namely that it disappears with the fall from prominence of the industrial novel. She proposes that the "problematic of labor" persists throughout the nineteenth century and continues to animate texts as diverse as Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, George Eliot's Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and the essays and literary work of William Morris and Oscar Wilde. Lesjak demonstrates how the ideological work of the literature of the Victorian era, the "golden age of the novel," revolved around separating the domains of labor and pleasure and emphasizing the latter as the proper realm of literary representation. She reveals how the utopian works of Morris and Wilde grapple with this divide and attempt to imagine new relationships between work and pleasure, relationships that might enable a future in which work is not the antithesis of pleasure. In Working Fictions, Lesjak argues for the contemporary relevance of the "labor novel," suggesting that within its pages lie resources with which to confront the gulf between work and pleasure that continues to characterize our world today."--Publisher's website.
505 00 $gPart I: Realism meets the masses --$t"How deep might be the romance": representing work and the working class in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton --$tA modern odyssey: Felix Holt's education for the masses --$gPart II: Coming of age in a world economy --$tSeeing the invisible: the Bildungsroman and the narration of a new regime of accumulation --$gPart III: Itineraries of the Utopian --$tWilliam Morris and a people's art: reimagining the pleasures of labor --$tUtopia, use, and the everyday: Oscar Wilde and a new economy of pleasure.
650 0 $aEnglish fiction$y19th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAuthors, English$y19th century$xPolitical and social views.
650 0 $aWorking class in literature.
650 0 $aWork in literature.
650 0 $aPleasure in literature.
650 0 $aSocial conflict in literature.
650 0 $aEconomics in literature.
650 0 $aCapitalism in literature.
650 0 $aIndustrialization in literature.
655 7 $aCriticism, interpretation, etc.$2fast
776 08 $iOnline version:$aLesjak, Carolyn, 1963-$tWorking fictions.$dDurham : Duke University Press, 2006$w(OCoLC)656202455
988 $a20060921
049 $aHLSS
906 $0DLC