Victorian Humor

A History, A Narrative Theory, and the Experience of Reading

Glynnis Cox (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

224 Seiten

2026
Routledge (Verlag)
9781032727110 (ISBN)

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Humor and the novel both belong, in important ways, to the nineteenth century. It is in the nineteenth-century that we saw an unprecedented outpouring of novels and short-stories, and it was also in the nineteenth century when ‘humor’ emerged as the dominant term through which the comic was described. Victorian Humor argues that these two features of nineteenth-century culture shape one another in significant ways and, together, point to a broader societal shift in ways of thinking about the individual. Building upon this historical connection, Victorian Humor offers a new theory and methodology for the interpretation of humor as a technique of narrative communication. This theory is described and illustrated through lively and amusing analyses of a wide range of texts: canonical texts by Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope, more obscure texts by Bulwer-Lytton, Meredith, and Frances Trollope, as well as the minor works of Eliot and Gaskell. This theory is developed in conversation with recent interdisciplinary research in humor theory and narrative theory, grounded in nineteenth-century literary and intellectual culture. It offers the field of literature and Victorian literature a needful update both to how we understand humor and interpret its presence in narrative.

Glynnis Cox is a recent graduate of the University of Edinburgh, where she served as graduate coordinator for the James Tait Black prize in fiction and biography and was a recipient of a Saltire Foundation scholarship. She currently teaches writing at Edinburgh Theological Seminary.

Contents:

Preface

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Introduction - Victorian Humor

· Their Laughter, Our Laughter

· A Place for Shared Laughter

· Current Humor Scholarship

· Nineteenth-Century Incongruity

· Humor and the Victorian Novel

· Bibliography

Chapter One - A History of the Comic and Humor

· Pre-Modern Views of the Comic and a “Changed Intellectual Habitus”

· From Typology to Personality

· Moral Theory, Sentiment, and Ridicule in the Eighteenth-Century

· The Romantic Imagination, Pathos, and Humor

· The Character of Victorian Humor

· Conclusion

· Bibliography

Chapter Two - Patterns of Attention

· Introducing Humor: Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island

· Victorian Realism and Accurate Eccentrics: Collins’ The Moonstone

· Victorian Manners and Recognizable Eccentrics: Trollope’s Orley Farm and Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters

· Conclusion

· Bibliography

Chapter Three - Narration

· The Interpretive Implications of Intimacy: Gaskell’s Cranford and Thackeray’s “A Little Dinner at Timmins’s”

· Dual-Focalization and Characterizing the First-Person Narrator: Dickens’ Great Expectations

· Rhetorical Irony, Romantic Irony, and the Narrator: Bulwer-Lytton’s Pelham

· Humorous Narratorial Presence: Eliot’s Middlemarch

· An Avatar of Benevolence: Dickens’ Pickwick

· Conclusion

· Bibliography

Chapter Four - Characters

· Peripheral Figures: The Immortality of Micawber

· Satiric Anti-Heroines: Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Frances Trollope’s Widow Barnaby, and Meredith’s Evan Harrington

· Humorous Heroines: Dickens’ David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend, Oliphant’s Miss Marjoribanks and Phoebe Junior, and Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles and The Prime Minister

· Conclusion

· Bibliography

Chapter Five - Persuasion

· Novel Religious Priorities: Trollope’s Rachel Ray, Eliot’s “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton”, and Oliphant’s “The Rector”

· Humorous Extremes and Humorous Mediation: Dickens’ Hard Times and Trollope’s The Warden

· Conclusion

· Bibliography

Conclusion - A Changing Character

· A Convivial Invitation

· Bibliography

Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	27.2.2026
Reihe/Serie	Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
Zusatzinfo	18 Halftones, black and white; 18 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-13	9781032727110 / 9781032727110
Zustand	Neuware