Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-siècle: The Brutal TongueAshgate, 2006 - 180 pages Christine Ferguson's timely study is the first comprehensive examination of the importance of language in forming a crucial nexus among popular fiction, biology, and philology at the Victorian fin-de-siècle. Focusing on a variety of literary and non-literary texts, the book maps out the dialogue between the Victorian life and social sciences most involved in the study of language and the literary genre frequently indicted for causing linguistic corruption and debasement - popular fiction. Ferguson demonstrates how Darwinian biological, philological, and anthropological accounts of 'primitive' and animal language were co-opted into wider cultural debates about the apparent brutality of popular fiction, and shows how popular novelists such as Marie Corelli, Grant Allen, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, and Bram Stoker used their fantastic narratives to radically reformulate the relationships among language, thought, and progress that underwrote much of the contemporary prejudice against mass literary taste. In its alignment of scientific, cultural, and popular discourses of human language, Language, Science, and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle stands as a corrective to assessments of best-selling fiction's intellectual, ideological, and aesthetic simplicity. |
Contents
What Does Brutal Language Mean? | 13 |
The Voice of the People 47 | 57 |
Savage Articulations in the Romances of Grant Allen | 71 |
Copyright | |
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Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-De-Siècle: The ... Christine Ferguson No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
ability Allen animal appearance argues attempts beautiful become belief Britain British Chapter civilization claimed colonial communication contemporary Corelli critics cultural Darwin Despite dialect dictionary difference Dracula England English European evidence example existence expressed fact fiction force forms Garner's Grant guage human ideas identity imagined imperial important intellectual interest island John kind lack language late Victorian learning least less linguistic literary literature living London Marie mass meaning mind monkey moral Moreau narrative native nature never nineteenth century notes novel once Origin perhaps popular position possible present Press primitive progress race racial readers recognize represents result Review romance savage Science scientific seems simply social society speak species speech standard story subjects suggests talk theory thing thought tion University vampire Victorian voice Wells's Woman women writing