Science, medicine, and aristocratic lineage in Victorian popular fiction / Abigail Boucher.
2023
PR871
Linked e-resources
Linked Resource
Online Access
Concurrent users
Unlimited
Authorized users
Authorized users
Document Delivery Supplied
Can lend chapters, not whole ebooks
Details
Title
Science, medicine, and aristocratic lineage in Victorian popular fiction / Abigail Boucher.
Author
Boucher, Abigail, author.
ISBN
9783031411410 (electronic bk.)
3031411412 (electronic bk.)
9783031411403
3031411404
3031411412 (electronic bk.)
9783031411403
3031411404
Published
Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (x, 237 pages.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.1007/978-3-031-41141-0 doi
Call Number
PR871
Dewey Decimal Classification
823/.809
Summary
Science, Medicine, and Lineage in Popular Fiction of the Long Nineteenth Century explores the dialogue between popular literature and medical and scientific discourse in terms of how they represent the highly visible an pathologized British aristocratic body. This books explores and complicates the two major portrayals of aristocrats in nineteenth-century literature: that of the medicalised, frail, debauched, and diseased aristocrat, and that of the heroic, active, beautiful 'noble', both of which are frequent and resonant in popular fiction of the long nineteenth century. Abigail Boucher argues that the concept of class in the long nineteenth century implicitly includes notions of blood, lineage, and bodily 'correctness', and that 'class' was therefore frequently portrayed as an empirical, scientific, and medical certainty. Due to their elevated and highly visual social positions, both historical and fictional aristocrats were frequently pathologized in the public mind and watched for signs of physical excellence or deviance. Using popular fiction, Boucher establishes patterns across decades, genres, and demographics and considers how these patterns react to, normalise, or feed into the advent of new scientific and medical understandings.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed September 7, 2023).
Series
Palgrave studies in literature, science, and medicine, 2634-6443
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783031411403
Linked Resources
Online Access
Record Appears in
Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Fashionable Diseases: Consumerism, Class, and Health in the Silver Fork Novels
Chapter 2: "Unblessed by Offspring": Fertility and the Aristocratic Male in Reynold's The Mysteries of the Court of London
Chapter 3: Aristocratic Inbreeding: Exogamy and Endogamy in Sensation Fiction
Chapter 4: Aristocratic Origins, Heredity, and Evolution in the Fin de Siècle Medieval Revival
Conclusion.
Chapter 1: Fashionable Diseases: Consumerism, Class, and Health in the Silver Fork Novels
Chapter 2: "Unblessed by Offspring": Fertility and the Aristocratic Male in Reynold's The Mysteries of the Court of London
Chapter 3: Aristocratic Inbreeding: Exogamy and Endogamy in Sensation Fiction
Chapter 4: Aristocratic Origins, Heredity, and Evolution in the Fin de Siècle Medieval Revival
Conclusion.