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- Title
ENGLISH GHOST STORIES: THE LITERARY OUTPUT OF VICTORIAN MALE AND FEMALE WRITERS.
- Authors
Presņakova, Irina
- Abstract
The given article is devoted to English ghost story of the Victorian age with regard to literary output of Victorian male and female writers. The central attention is given to the argument whether English ghost story contributes to our understanding of Victorian age as essentially patriarchal culture or it reestablishes this assumption. Contribution of Victorian ghost story writers to the process of formation of Victorian gender ideology may not be underestimated. Until relatively recently it was believed that Victorian literary canon was predominantly realismocentric and male-authored; yet with time this assumption was reevaluated by several scholars. There are two factors that shed light on the issue. The first one is as follows: Victorian literature as a means of expression of the socio-spatial context reveals the situation of cultural symbiosis, wherein realism as a literary movement coexists with a whole range of alternative phenomena, the ghost story among them. Ghost story is one of the constituent elements of this extremely complex and heterogeneous artistic consciousness of the 19th century that until recently was neglected and excluded from the literary space of Victorian England. Secondly, the ghost story is assumingly regarded as woman's property. Excluded from the literary canon of the period, the ghost story flourished in the fashionable literary magazines, journals, Christmas supplements, and literary reviews and has consistently maintained its popularity throughout the last two centuries. It is noteworthy that ghost story was acknowledged by both the hallmarks of Victorian writers and general public. Literary profession like any other social activity in the predominantly patriarchal society favored the literary oeuvre of male writers leaving aside a great number of female-authored ghost stories whose names (hidden under pseudonyms or referred to as anon.) reemerged only in the latter half of the 20th century owing to feminist criticism of the 1970s and 1980s. The given article provides reference to the names of some very successful best-selling women writers. Recovery and inclusion of these forgotten and sometimes undervalued texts into the literary canon allow for reassessment of the Victorian literary space as predominantly patriarchal.
- Subjects
ENGLISH ghost stories; AUTHORS; CANON (Literature)
- Publication
Cultural Studies / Kultūras Studijas, 2019, Vol 11, p17
- ISSN
1691-6026
- Publication type
Article