Research Catalog

Title

Relics of death in Victorian literature and culture / Deborah Lutz.

Author

Lutz, Deborah

Publication

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 244 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"Nineteenth-century Britons treasured objects of daily life that had once belonged to their dead. The love of these keepsakes, which included hair, teeth, and other remains, speaks of an intimacy with the body and death, a way of understanding absence through its materials, which is less widely felt today. Deborah Lutz analyzes relic culture as an affirmation that objects held memories and told stories. These practices show a belief in keeping death vitally intertwined with life - not as memento mori but rather as respecting the singularity of unique beings. In a consumer culture in full swing by the 1850s, keepsakes of loved ones stood out as non-reproducible, authentic things whose value was purely personal. Through close reading of the works of Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and others, this study illuminates the treasuring of objects that had belonged to or touched the dead"--

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96.

Subject

• English literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Death in literature
• Relics in literature
• Literature and society > Great Britain > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-227) and index.

Contents

Introduction: lyrical matter -- Infinite materiality: Keats, D. G. Rossetti and the Romantics -- The miracle of ordinary things: Brontë and Wuthering Heights -- The many faces of death masks: Dickens and Great Expectations -- The elegy as shrine: Tennyson and 'In Memoriam' -- Hair jewelry as congealed time: Hardy and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Afterword: death as death.

Call Number

JFE 15-2164

ISBN

• 9781107077447 (hardback)
• 1107077443 (hardback)
• 9781107434394 (paperback)
• 1107434394 (paperback)

LCCN

2014032221

OCLC

887606165

Author

Lutz, Deborah, author.

Title

Relics of death in Victorian literature and culture / Deborah Lutz.

Publisher

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 96.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-227) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 15-2164