The suburban imagination : aesthetics, desire, and space in nineteenth-century Britain
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Suburban Imagination examines the connection between literary imaginaries and suburban space in nineteenth-century Britain from William Wordsworth to William Morris, revealing the material and cultural forces that explain the high value that Anglo-American society has put on low-density residential forms for the past two centuries. While suburbia's origins are often located after the Second World War, in my dissertation I argue that its beginnings lie in the co-creation of new metropolitan spaces and literary texts in early-to-mid nineteenth-century Britain. From 1810 to 1860 the status of the suburbs shifted decisively, as they became the familiar semi-detached middle-class residences that we know today, after centuries of being 'low' and filthy, in reputation and often in fact. While these changes were underway, literary works both contributed to the suburbs' rehabilitation and registered the impossibility of ever fully purifying them in narratives that alternately featured suburban successes and failures. Through readings of the aesthetics, narratives, and styles of suburban and anti-suburban writing, I restore our sense of the genuine complexities, heterogeneities, and surprising narrative potentials of the suburbs as a real and represented space. To do this means to think the suburbs' past and their future anew.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Eichenlaub, Justin Michael |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, English Department |
| Primary advisor | Gigante, Denise, 1965- |
| Thesis advisor | Gigante, Denise, 1965- |
| Thesis advisor | Moretti, Franco, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
| Advisor | Moretti, Franco, 1950- |
| Advisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Justin Michael Eichenlaub. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of English. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2012. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Justin Michael Eichenlaub
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