Repetition and difference in nineteenth-century British narrative

Repetition and Difference in Nineteenth-Century British Narrative analyzes narrative repetition in historically specific terms of similarity and difference, thereby historicizing repetition: first by analyzing repetition into similarity and difference; secondly by understanding repetition as a negotiation between similarity and difference; and thirdly by recognizing that those are not transcendental categories but cultural constructions--linguistic expressions of limited social perspectives made at particular moments in history. This work asserts that, as the values of difference changed during the nineteenth century, the traditional, grounded repetition-of-similarity was increasingly contested by an emergent, destabilizing repetition-of-difference, which grew in response to industrial, cultural, economic, and other political developments at the time. In critical practice, this historical view situates formalistic readings and the insights of psychoanalysis into the structural and temporal aspects of narrative and repetition. A theoretical introduction constructs an interpretive model of repetition, which is then applied to both Gothic and Conradian doubling narratives as well as to novels by Emily Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Hogg, Wilde, and others.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Thomas, Mark Ellis

Contributors dc:contributor

• Garrett, Peter K.

• Literature, English

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1992 Thomas, Mark Ellis

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9236607
(UMI)AAI9236607

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/21665