A Community of One by Martin A Danahay

A Community of One by Martin A Danahay

Complementing recent feminist studies of female self-representation, this book examines the dynamics of masculine self-representation in nineteenth-century British literature. Arguing that the category "autobiography" was a product of nineteenth-century individualism, the author analyzes the dependence of the nineteenth-century masculine subject on autonomy or self-naming as the prerequisite for the composition of a life history. The masculine autobiographer achieves this autonomy by using a feminized other as a metaphorical mirror for the self. The feminized other in these texts represents the social cost of masculine autobiography. Authors from Wordsworth to Arnold, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Stuart Mill, and Edmund Gosse, use female lovers and family members as symbols for the community with which they feel they have lost contact. In the theoretical introduction, the author argues that these texts actually privilege the autonomous self over the images of community they ostensibly value, creating in the process a self-enclosed and self-referential "community of one."

Martin A. Danahay is Professor of English at Brock University and writes on Victorian culture, autobiography and the impact of new technologies on society. Working at the intersection of literature, art, and social history, his articles have addressed topics from the representation of music hall by Walter Sickert to the poetry and paintings of Dante Gabriel as virtual subjects. He has also published analyses of such contemporary popular culture artifacts as the Matrix films and the autobiography of Kathie Lee Gifford. These publications are united by an attention to cultural production in its all its manifestations, ranging from poetry to photography. His book-length publications include A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth Century Britain and editions of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780791415122
ISBN 10	0791415120
Titel	A Community of One
Autor	Martin A Danahay
Serie	Suny Series The Margins Of Literature
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	State University of New York Press
Erscheinungsjahr	1993-08-24
Seitenanzahl	232
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.