Neo-Victorianism and the Memory of Empire

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Description

Examining the global dimensions of Neo-Victorianism, this book explores how the appropriation of Victorian images in contemporary literature and culture has emerged as a critical response to the crises of decolonization and Imperial collapse. Neo-Victorianism and the Memory of Empire explores the phenomenon by reading a range of popular and literary Anglophone neo-Victorian texts, including Alan Moore's Graphic Novel From Hell, works by Peter Carey and Margaret Atwood, the films of Jackie Chan and contemporary 'Steampunk' science fiction. Through these readings Elizabeth Ho explores how constructions of popular memory and fictionalisations of the past reflect political and psychological engagements with our contemporary post-Imperial circumstances.

Reviews

By demonstrating that recovery from Victoria's empire is a global cultural enterprise and by insisting on neo-Victorianism's import in a postcolonial present - where empire is a thing to be dealt with and not just a thing to be missed - Elizabeth Ho's work refreshes our account of the field. Serious, engaged, and always smart, Neo-Victorianism and the Memory of Empire identifies what's consequential in those of our contemporary pleasures that circulate around a particularized past. -- Mary Ann O'Farrell, Department of English, Texas A&M University, USA

Author Bio

Elizabeth Ho is Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College, USA. She is co-editor of the book Thatcher and After: Margaret Thatcher and Her Afterlife in Contemporary Culture (2010).