Tragedy in the Victorian Novel: Theory and Practice in the Novels of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Henry James

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CUP Archive, Jan 26, 1978 - Literary Criticism - 182 pages
How does one dominant literary genre fall into decline, to be superseded by another? The classic instance is the rise of the novel in the nineteenth century, and how it came to embody the tragic vision of life which had previously been the domain of drama. Dr King focuses on three novelists, George Eliot. Thomas Hardy and Henry James. All three, while trying to offer a realistic picture of life in prose narrative, wrote with the concept of tragedy clearly in mind. The concern was widespread, and Victorian literary critics found themselves discussing the problem of how one might reconcile concepts as dissimilar as tragedy and realism. Their criticism provides Dr King with her starting point. Dr King examines the work of her three authors in relation to the large concepts of traditional tragic thought, and also examines how the form of specific novels was affected by their differing ideas of tragedy.

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Contents

DETERMINISM
16
FROM TRAGIC DRAMA TO THE TRAGIC NOVEL
36
REALISM AND TRAGEDY
50
ii Realism and symbolism
59
4
70
TRAGEDY ANCIENT AND MODERN
97
FREEDOM AND FORM THE TRAGIC
127
CONCLUSION
158
Select bibliography
169
Index
179
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