- Description
- 1 online resource.
- 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
- Uniform Title
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture.
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
- Introduction: lyrical matter -- 1. Infinite materiality: Keats, D.G. Rossetti and the Romantics -- 2. The miracle of ordinary things: Bronte and Wuthering Heights -- 3. The many faces of death masks: Dickens and Great Expectations -- 4. The elegy as shrine: Tennyson and 'In Memoriam' -- 5. Hair jewelry as congealed time: Hardy and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Afterword: death as death.
- ISBN
- 9781316248287
- 1316248283
- 9781139924887
- 1139924885
- OCLC
- 898770399
- Author
Lutz, Deborah.
- Title
Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture / Deborah Lutz.
- Imprint
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Type of Content
text
- Type of Medium
computer
- Type of Carrier
online resource
- Series
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture.
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Source of description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed January 6, 2015).
- Connect to:
- Chronological Term
1800-1899
- Other Form:
Print version: Lutz, Deborah. Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture 9781107077447 (DLC) 2014032221 (OCoLC)887606165