Research Catalog

Spaces of the sacred and profane : Dickens, Trollope, and the Victorian cathedral town

Title: Spaces of the sacred and profane : Dickens, Trollope, and the Victorian cathedral town / Elizabeth A. Bridgham.
Author: Bridgham, Elizabeth A.
Publication: New York : Routledge, 2008.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Book/Text	Use in library	PR468.C3 .B75 2008	Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 192 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"This study examines the unique cultural space of Victorian cathedral towns as they appear in the literary work of Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope, arguing that Dickens and Trollope use the cathedral town's enclosure, and its overt connections between sacred and secular, present and past, as an ideal locus from which to critique Victorian religious attitudes, aesthetic anxieties, business practices, and even immigration. By displacing these issues from the metropolis, these social authors defamiliarize them, raising what might have been considered strictly urban problems to the level of national crises. By situating contemporary debates in cathedral towns, Dickens and Trollope complicate the restrictive dichotomy between urban and rural space often drawn by contemporary critics and Victorian fiction writers alike. In this book, Bridgham focuses on the appearance of three such key concerns appearing in the cathedral towns of each writer: religious fragmentation, the social value of artisticlabor, and the Gothic revival. Dickens and Trollope reject Romantic nostalgia by concentrating on the ancient, yet vital (as opposed to ruined) edifices of the cathedrals, and by demonstrating ways in which modern sensibilities, politics, and comforts supersede the values of the cloister. In this sense, their cathedral towns are not idealized escapes; rather, they reflect the societies of which they are a part."--Publisher's description.

Series Statement

Literary criticism and cultural theory

Uniform Title

Literary criticism and cultural theory

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-184) and index.

Contents

Ambivalent spaces -- Monstrous unions : Dickens, Trollope, and the (Anglo-) Catholic question -- Doctrinal dissonance : cathedral music and the issue of vocation -- "Broken niche and defaced statue" : creativity in the cathedral -- Picturesque escape or reimagined space? : the cathedral town in context.

ISBN

0415979528
9780415979528
9780203934975
0203934970

LCCN

2007018585
99819739891

OCLC

ocn124162864
124162864
SCSB-1459011

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library