TY  - BOOK
AU  - Mariaconcetta Costantini
PY  - 2015
CY  - Lausanne, Switzerland
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
SN  - 1664-2104
SN  - 9783035107685
TI  - Sensation and Professionalism in the Victorian Novel
DO  - 10.3726/978-3-0351-0768-5
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1054461
N2  - This book explores the extent to which four sensation novelists responded to the Victorian theorizing of professionalism. A crucial period of redefinition of the professional ideal, the third quarter of the nineteenth century also witnessed the rise and the decline of the sensation novel, a scandalous and electrifying form that challenged aesthetic and socio-cultural standards. Owing to their controversial position in the literary marketplace, novelists like Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charles Reade and Ellen Wood developed a keen interest in professional issues, which occupy centre stage in their 1850s-70s narratives. By drawing on a variety of sociological, cultural and philosophical theories, Costantini skilfully assesses the ideological implications of the genre’s fictionalization of professionalism. She shows how sensation novelists provocatively represented the challenges faced by both elite and rising professionals, who are used as narrative vehicles for thorny discourses on authorship, ethicality, aestheticism and sociocultural identity.
KW  - ideal, fictionalization, aestheticism, sociocultural identity, ethicality
LA  - English
ER  -