Literary Illusions: Performance Magic and Victorian Literature (Nineteenth-Century and Neo-Victorian Cultures) - Hardcover

Pittard, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 147446033X ISBN 13: 9781474460330

Verlag: Edinburgh University Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Literary Illusions explores the dialogue between Victorian literature and one of the nineteenth century’s most popular modes of performance: conjuring. It explores the ways in which Victorian literature frequently deployed the figure of the magician to explore performance magic as a metaphor for writing itself, and the ways in which conjurors themselves were authors (of highly fictionalised biographies), while authors explored the narrative opportunities offered by magic (most notably Charles Dickens). The book theorises magic as a manifestation of Victorian concerns with authorship and the intellectual property debate, with the magician often deployed as a privileged – and occasionally parodied – figure in debates on textuality. Literary Illusions offers a reconceptualisation of the relationship between popular culture and literature in the nineteenth century, bringing canonical figures such as Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell into dialogue with lesser known Victorian bestsellers such as Henry Cockton and Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, and innovatively blends performance history with literary criticism.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Pittard is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, specialising in Victorian literature. His books include a new critical edition of The Return of Sherlock Holmes (2023), The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes (2019), and Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction (2011). He has published numerous articles on Victorian culture in journals including Studies in the Novel, 19; Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Victorian Periodicals Review, Clues: A Journal of Detection, and Women: A Cultural Review.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Edinburgh University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 147446033X
• ISBN 13: 9781474460330
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 259
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar