Doktori Disszertáció

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ Kirchknopf Andrea Recent (Re)workings of (Post-)Victorian Fiction (Posztviktoriánus regényátiratok) Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola A Doktori Iskola vezetıje: Dr. Kulcsár Szabó Ernı, egyetemi tanár Modern Angol és Amerikai Irodalom Program A Program vezetıje: Dr. Péter Ágnes, egyetemi tanár A bizottság tagjai és tudományos fokozatuk: Elnök: Dr. Péter Ágnes, CSc, habilitált doktor Külsı bíráló: Dr. Bényei Tamás, DSc, habilitált doktor Belsı bíráló: Dr. Takács Ferenc, PhD Tag: Dr. Rawlinson Zsuzsa, PhD Titkár: Dr. Farkas Ákos, PhD Póttag: Dr. Péteri Éva, PhD Póttag: Dr. Marinovich Sarolta, CSc Témavezetı: Dr. Friedrich Judit, CSc, tanszékvezetı egyetemi docens Budapest, 2011 Recent (Re)workings of (Post-)Victorian Fiction Contents & Explanations Introduction where readers learn what post-Victorian fiction is, why it is important and how it is approached in the following work. 1 Chapter 1. From Victorian to Post-Victorian : Definitions, Terminology, Context 10 1.1 The Meanings of Victorian 12 1.2 Appropriating Victorian : Terming Postmodern Rewrites 17 1.3 Contexts and Critical Discourses of Post-Victorian Fiction 27 The background to post-Victorian rewriting is established, settling basic questions like what to call this type of fiction and in which critical frameworks to discuss it. Chapter 2. Post-Victorian Fiction in its Social and Political Context 44 2.1 The Literary Scene: Authors, Readers, Criticism and the Market 45 2.2 Narratives of Identity in Post-Victorian Fiction 58 The history of post-Victorian fiction of the last thirty years is scrutinised by first exploring the contemporary literary landscape, then analysing novels within the framework of postcolonial and postimperial narratives. The pieces examined in more detail are: Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983), Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988), A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990), Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things (1992), Graham Swift’s Ever After (1992), Gail Jones’s Sixty Lights (2004) and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006). Chapter 3. Jane Eyre Tailor-Made: A Case Study of the Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Charlotte – Adaptive Chain of Novels and Other Adaptations 84 3.1 “Reader, I married him” –Author (Narrator), Reader, Criticism and the Market 85 3.2 “Who am I?” “Where am I?” “Is this home?”–Narratives of Identity 102 3.3 “Amen! Even so come the Lord of Angels”– Ending(s), Adaptations and Motifs 127 Applying the findings of the previous chapter, a critical historical perspective is provided on Jane Eyre (1847) and its adaptations. In addition to Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and D. M. Thomas’s Charlotte (2000) which receive the most attention, Clare Boylan’s ‘Jane Eyre’ Revisited: An Alternative Ending (1990), Emma Tennant’s Adéle (2002), Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair (2001), Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) and Clare Boylan’s Emma Brown (2003) are also considered. Chapter 4. The Future of the Post-Victorian Novel: Indications of Topic and Genre 144 4.1 Biographical Novel 145 4.2 Island Fiction 157 4.3 Novel Sequels: Dickensiana and The Case of Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair 168 Present thematic and generic trends in post-Victorian fiction are surveyed. First, fictionalisations of Henry James’s life and writing are introduced including Emma Tennant’s Felony: The Private History of The Aspern Papers (2002), Colm Tóibín’s The Master (2004), Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), David Lodge’s Author Author (2004) and Michiel Heyns’s The Typewriter’s Tale (2005). Second, in the island fiction section, Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge (1991) and Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers (2000) are discussed. Finally, Fforde’s text is closely read, preceded by a brief description of Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006) as items on the map of Dickensiana. Conclusion in which readers get a full summary of what has been argued in this work and are also ensured that the proliferation of post-Victorian fiction is ongoing. 186 Appendix 194 References 197 Introduction Why does the Victorian age still excite so much interest in contemporary Britain? How does this phenomenon appear in contemporary literature? What aspects of the past receive attention and in whose favour do they get reformulated? In what ways may these rewritings influence various sites of cultural production from theoretical thought to marketing strategies? In this dissertation I survey such questions with a special focus on novelistic refashionings of the nineteenth century as a significant trend in postmodern literature from the 1960s to the present day. Out of the ever-growing body of such novels 1 about thirty pieces get a mention in this work ranging from the first two classics Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) through Booker Prize winners of the eighties and the nineties such as Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) or A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990) to most recent rewritings like Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006) and Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress (2008). These texts exhibit diverse appropriations of Victorian authors, fictional characters, novels, conventions and motifs, all assisting in establishing correspondences between the past and the present in various ways. This set of postmodern fiction summons a variety of critical approaches mainly depending on the chronological and topical foci of the novels. Interestingly, the analysis of such texts has acquired a position in recent histories of Victorian literature, usually towards the end of such collections like the last two papers in Writing and Victorianism edited by J.B. Bullen (1997) and in Rereading Victorian fiction edited by Alice Jenkins and Juliet John (2000). This proves both that some nineteenth-century texts are hardly read without their postmodern revisions and that fiction has become a legitimate tool of scholarly interpretation functioning in an interspersed way with other modes of critical analysis, 2 which are developments made ample use of in this dissertation. One such additional 1 In the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies (also referred to as NVS) there is a list of 17 novels of this type published within just a few months of the 2008/2009 season (NVS 2.1: 196-197). The corpus of this dissertation is limited to the most prominent or representative items of the abundance of texts; items that can best indicate the discussed trends and tendencies within this field of study. 2 Malcolm Bradbury already saw signs of this intermingling of fiction and criticism in the early nineties but still phrased it as a desirable future step: “literary theory or criticism may well begin striving to recover its intimacy with the creative, with the experimental nature of writing and its exploration of things imagined, or fictive” (Boylan 1993: 61) 1 analytical context for Victorian fiction appears to be film and media studies, as the last paper in A Companion to the Victorian Novel (2005) edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing illustrates, where contemporary film and television adaptations of Victorian novels enhance the understanding of the source texts. Indeed, Victorianists trying to make sense of postmodern rewritings of nineteenth-century material understand such endeavours as various new entry points into Victorianism, not establishing a new field of research but stretching the boundaries of the existing one of Victorian studies (Llewellyn 2008: 165, 168). Analysing contemporary fictional responses to Victorian texts from a postmodern perspective, critical literature utilises a number of discourses. Christian Gutleben in his Nostalgic Postmodernism (2001) tackles novels exclusively and categorises them as a specific subgenre of postmodern fiction, which status they have eventually achieved in the field of contemporary literary studies. Other collections of essays discuss fictional texts within a wider spectrum of cultural production and reproduction. In Refracting the Canon in Contemporary British Literature and Film (2004) edited by Susana Onega and Christian Gutleben and in Cora Kaplan’s Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism (2007) heritage film also features as a component in discussing (re)canonisation; while Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time (2002) edited by Christine L. Krueger and Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century (2000) edited by John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff additionally include theatre, photography, architecture, teaching, science, technology and different forms of living as further frameworks in which Victorian influence on the present day can be discussed. The variety of discourses applied to the phenomenon of readdressing nineteenth-century texts indicates its popularity as well as its present-day theoretical relevance. Victorian Turns, NeoVictorian Returns: Essays on Fiction and Culture (2008) edited by Penny Gay, Judith Johnston and Catherine Waters marks a recent attempt to discuss Victorian novels together with their rewritings, promoting the co-existence of Victorianist and postmodernist perspectives of reading: “In bringing together essays that address both Victorian writings and their afterlives, this volume differs from the other recent collections devoted to Victorian afterlives alone” (Johnston and Waters 2008: 10). Yet, this endeavour seems to fail here as there is a lack of correspondence between the two, quite 2 disproportionate, parts of the collection leaving

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