Spaces Of The Sacred And Profane: Dickens, Trollope, And The Victorian Cathedral Town (literary Criticism And Cultural Theory)
by Elizabeth A. Bridgham /
2007 / English / PDF
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This study examines the unique cultural space of Victorian
cathedral towns as they appear in the literary work of Charles
Dickens and Anthony Trollope, arguing that Dickens and Trollope
use the cathedral town’s enclosure, and its overt connections
between sacred and secular, present and past, as an ideal locus
from which to critique Victorian religious attitudes, aesthetic
anxieties, business practices, and even immigration. By
displacing these issues from the metropolis, these social authors
defamiliarize them, raising what might have been considered
strictly urban problems to the level of national crises.
This study examines the unique cultural space of Victorian
cathedral towns as they appear in the literary work of Charles
Dickens and Anthony Trollope, arguing that Dickens and Trollope
use the cathedral town’s enclosure, and its overt connections
between sacred and secular, present and past, as an ideal locus
from which to critique Victorian religious attitudes, aesthetic
anxieties, business practices, and even immigration. By
displacing these issues from the metropolis, these social authors
defamiliarize them, raising what might have been considered
strictly urban problems to the level of national crises.
By situating contemporary debates in cathedral towns, Dickens and
Trollope complicate the restrictive dichotomy between urban and
rural space often drawn by contemporary critics and Victorian
fiction writers alike.
By situating contemporary debates in cathedral towns, Dickens and
Trollope complicate the restrictive dichotomy between urban and
rural space often drawn by contemporary critics and Victorian
fiction writers alike.
In this book, Bridgham focuses on the appearance of three such
key concerns appearing in the cathedral towns of each writer:
religious fragmentation, the social value of artistic labor, and
the Gothic revival. Dickens and Trollope reject Romantic
nostalgia by concentrating on the ancient, yet vital (as opposed
to ruined) edifices of the cathedrals, and by demonstrating ways
in which modern sensibilities, politics, and comforts supersede
the values of the cloister. In this sense, their cathedral towns
are not idealized escapes; rather, they reflect the societies of
which they are a part.
In this book, Bridgham focuses on the appearance of three such
key concerns appearing in the cathedral towns of each writer:
religious fragmentation, the social value of artistic labor, and
the Gothic revival. Dickens and Trollope reject Romantic
nostalgia by concentrating on the ancient, yet vital (as opposed
to ruined) edifices of the cathedrals, and by demonstrating ways
in which modern sensibilities, politics, and comforts supersede
the values of the cloister. In this sense, their cathedral towns
are not idealized escapes; rather, they reflect the societies of
which they are a part.
