Ethics and Narrative in the English Novel, 1880-1914

by Jil Larson

Overview

Drawing on interdisciplinary work in the field of ethics by a diverse range of thinkers, including Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur, Jil Larson offers new readings of late-Victorian and turn-of-the-century British fiction. Focusing on novels by Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, Larson explores the conjunction of ethics and fin-de-siècle history and culture through a consideration of what narratives from this period tell us about emotion, reason, and gender, aestheticism, and such speech acts as promising and lying.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521121675
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/29/2009
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jil Larson is Assistant Professor of English at Western Michigan University. A former managing editor of Victorian Studies, she has published on Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and ethics and literature. She is currently a member of the Executive Board of the Centre for the Study of Ethics in Society at Western Michigan University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Ethics and the turn to narrative; 2. Victorian history and ethics: anxiety at the fin-de-siecle; 3. Emotion, gender, and ethics in fiction by Thomas Hardy, and the New Women Writers; 4. When hope unblooms: chance and moral luck in A Laodicean, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Tess; 5. Oscar Wilde and Henry James: aestheticizing ethics; 6. Promises, lies and ethical agency in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes; Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...Larson's book is a challenging reevaluation of ethical criticism and Victorian novels." Religious Studies Review

"Larson's book proves to be a solid study of ethics and narrative...The Afterword is valuable for its succinct recapitulation of the study's premises and conclusions. The volume concludes with twenty-two pages of notes, a solid bibliography, and a short index." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

"Jil Larson offers an intriguing new volume...Larson's ethical readings succeed admirably in terms of ethical criticism's interpretive potential for both camps." George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies

"This is a valuable moment in a study by a critic with a rare combination of knowledge of recent moral philosophy, ethical criticism, and criticism of late-nineteenth-century British novelists." Victorian Studies

From the Publisher