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Sensational realism? Jane Eyre and the problem of genre
This article is available open access through the publisherâs website at the link below.This article explores the issue of Jane Eyre and genre, examining the novel's relationship to a multitude of literary genres, including gothic, realist, fairytale, bildungsroman, and sensation. Critical assessments of BrontĂ«'s novel have tended to explore the text's relationships with these various forms of fiction in isolation, focusing, for example, on the narrative's gothic tropes, or its relationship with the Victorian realist novel. This article seeks to explore the tensions inherent in the text's relationship to these differing, often contradictory genres: to what extent are the realist elements of the text undermined by the narrative's reliance on supernatural, sensational, and distinctly unrealistic occurrences? At the heart of this tension is arguably a conflict between high-brow and low-brow literature. How, if at all, does the narrative negotiate and resolve these tensions? In particular, I posit that BrontĂ«'s novel can be read as a forerunner to the sensation novel - a form which became popular in the 1860s, and which is marked by a combination of realism and sensationalism. A number of sensation novels, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862) - one of the defining texts of the genre - are directly influenced by Jane Eyre, reworking elements of BrontĂ«'s narrative (in particular the bigamy plot, and the character of the mad wife). In light of the conflicting aspects of BrontĂ«'s novel, I question how useful it is to attempt to pigeonhole the text within a specific literary genre, and to what extent this may in fact limit our reading and understanding of the narrative. I seek to ascertain the extent to which the conflicting elements of BrontĂ«'s novel are ultimately resolved, or whether the narrative as a whole is undermined by these contrasting features. In exploring Jane Eyre from this perspective, I seek to highlight not only the diversity of Victorian fiction, but also the problematic nature of genre itself, the boundaries of which, as BrontĂ«'s narrative illustrates, are fluid, blurred, and at times imperceptible
Gender, conflict, continuity: Anne Brontë's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' (1848) and Sarah Grand's 'The Heavenly Twins' (1893)
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 W. S. Maney & Son Ltd.The New Woman fiction of the fin de siĂšcle brought into conflict patriarchal and feminist ideologies, challenging widely held assumptions about gender roles and the position of women. Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins is an important contribution to the genre, and engages with a number of the key issues that concerned feminists at the end of the nineteenth century, including marriage, the education of women, the double standard, male licentiousness, and the wider issue of social purity. These are also key themes in Anne BrontĂ«'s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall â published nearly fifty years before Grand's seminal New Woman text. In this essay, I consider Anne BrontĂ«'s text as a forerunner to the New Woman fiction of the fin de siĂšcle, through a comparative examination of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Heavenly Twins
"A touch of in'nard fever": Illness and moral decline in 'Elster's Folly'
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 Taylor & Francis.The important relationship between illness and morality in the fiction of Mrs Henry Wood looms large in her 1866 novel Elster's Folly. This article argues that Wood's apparently conservative sensationalism, suggested by the presence of a moralizing narrator in many of her works, as well as by the conclusions to her novels, in which order is almost inevitably restored, in fact conceals a more subversive element in her fiction. In Elster's Folly, transgression, and specifically sexual transgression, is figured as contagious (a common ploy in Victorian fiction), and a superficial reading would seem to reinforce the notion of Wood as a conservative sensation writer: a number of characters whose morality is in question fall ill and die, while moral health is clearly linked to physical health through Wood's portrayal of the Countess Dowager, an immoral woman who suffers from an obsessive phobia of illness. However, the conclusion of the novel undermines this reading: the illegitimate daughter, unlike the illegitimate son, is not only permitted to live, but also retains the title to which she is not, in fact, legally entitled. In this way, Wood subtly undermines conventional Victorian morality through her representation of sin, illness and the family
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Introduction to adapting the nineteenth century: Revisiting, revising and rewriting the past
Copyright @ 2010 Neo-Victorian Studies. This is an open access journal. The journal's open access policy is restricted to educational and non-commercial use in accordance with Creative Commons: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license.No abstract available
Archivists and Historians: A View from the United States
Considers the debate about the relationship of history and archives and archivists by examining the mission of the archival profession, the nature of archival theory and knowledge, and, as a case study, the career of Lester J. Cappon (1900-1981) as both historian and archivist
Assessing iSchools
Over the past decade, iSchools have emerged to educate the next generation of information professionals and scholars. Claiming to be edgy and innovative, how can and should these schools function in the spirit of assessment that now drives so much in the university? This essay, which explores how well we can assess iSchools, emerged from a doctoral seminar. Academic Culture and Practice, taught by Richard Cox and including four doctoral student participants and the Dean of School of Information Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Ronald Larsen. The doctoral students, among other activities, were required to work on assignments to support a self-study for the University of Pittsburgh's reaccreditation by the Middle States Association. As we proceeded through the course, we found ourselves increasingly drawn to questions about how iSchools, in their nascent state, can assess themselves. Four major areasâreputation, evaluating productivity in scholarly publishing, student evaluation of teaching, and student satisfaction with their academic programsâthat emerged based on student interest as the seminar proceeded are discussed
Teaching Advocacy
This essay discusses the use and value of case studies in teaching students about archival advocacy. It also considers why and how educators need to rethink how advocacy fits into the curriculum and how students can produce case studies
Technologyâs Promise, the Copying of Records, and the Archivistâs Challenge: A Case Study in Documentation Rhetoric
Discussion of implications of electrostatic photocopying on archival appraisal, with particular attention to the macro-appraisal and collaborative models offered by Helen Samuels
Writing for Professional Development and for the Profession
The records and information management (RIM) field needs its professionals to write and contribute to the fieldâs knowledge, but many do not do so because they are not aware of many basic, helpful tools available to them. This brief essay reviews the tools that RIM professionals can draw on for professional writing
Digital Curation and the Citizen Archivist
The increasing array and power of personal digital recordkeeping systems promises both to make it more difficult for established archives to acquire personal and family archives and less likely that individuals might wish to donate personal and family digital archives to archives, libraries, museums, and other institutions serving as documentary repositories. This paper provides a conceptual argument for how projects such as the Digital Curation one ought to consider developing spinoffs for archivists training private citizens how to preserve, manage, and use digital personal and family archives. Rethinking how we approach the public, which will increasingly face difficult challenges in caring for their digital archives, also brings with it substantial promise in informing them about the nature and importance of the archival mission. Can the Digital Curation project provide tools that canbe used for working with the public
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