TY - GEN T1 - Worlds enough : the invention of realism in the Victorian novel A1 - Freedgood, Elaine LA - English PP - Princeton, New Jersey PB - Princeton University Press YR - 2019 UL - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/jstor_eba_on1112420060 AB - "A short, provocative book that challenges basic assumptions about Victorian fiction. Now praised for its realism and formal coherence, the Victorian novel was not always great, or even good, in the eyes of its critics. As Elaine Freedgood reveals in Worlds Enough, it was only in the late 1970s that literary critics constructed a prestigious version of British realism, erasing more than a century of controversy about the value of Victorian fiction. Examining criticism of Victorian novels since the 1850s, Freedgood demonstrates that while they were praised for their ability to bring certain social truths to fictional life, these novels were also criticized for their formal failures and compared unfavorably to their French and German counterparts. She analyzes the characteristics of realism--denotation, omniscience, paratext, reference, and ontology--and the politics inherent in them, arguing that if critics displaced the nineteenth-century realist novel as the standard by which others are judged, literary history might be richer. It would allow peripheral literatures and the neglected wisdom of their critics to come fully into view. She concludes by questioning the aesthetic racism built into prevailing ideas about the centrality of realism in the novel, and how those ideas have affected debates about world literature. By re-examining the critical reception of the Victorian novel, Worlds Enough suggests how we can rethink our practices and perceptions about books we think we know." OP - 152 CN - PR468.R42 F74 2019 SN - 9780691194301 SN - 0691194300 SN - 9780691193304 SN - 0691193304 KW - English literature : 19th century : History and criticism. KW - Realism in literature. KW - Littérature anglaise : 19e siècle : Histoire et critique. KW - Réalisme dans la littérature. KW - LITERARY CRITICISM : European : English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. KW - English literature KW - Realism in literature KW - 1800-1899 KW - Literary criticism KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc. KW - Literary criticism. KW - Critiques littéraires. ER -