Not gonna lie; such a slog

The Victorian Novel: A Guide to Criticism by Francis O'Gorman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a fairly good look at 20th century criticism of Victorian literature. Of course, we're almost twenty years into the 21st century, so I'm left wanting to know the current state of the discipline (which is no fault of this book's, only of it's publication date).

I was surprised at the lack of Sally Mitchell and Pamela Gilbert, and I expected Richard Altick to be mentioned a lot more than he was, but other than that, I appreciated learning about aspects of the study of the Victorian novel that my education lacked. My graduate school was very heavily American, and so I didn't actually get to take very many Victorian courses as a grad student; most of my studies into this period were self-directed. So I mostly focused on feminist and New Historicist readings of texts.

I did come away from this book thanking the baby Jesus in his golden diapers that I never had to suffer through a course on realism. OMG, that chapter was a bunch of incomprehensible nonsense and hooey. Is the cup real? Is the book real? Is anything real? WE CANNOT KNOW! But we can make up a bunch of convoluted ways to talk about it for sure. Bleck. LOL

I think this would be a good text to use in an upper-division level or grad class, especially if there's an updated edition that covers the 21st century.



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