Far from being just children's literature, Victorian fantasy is an art form that flourished in opposition to the repressive social and intellectual conditions of "Victorianism." In this fully revised and expanded edition, Stephen Prickett explores the way in which Victorian writers used non-realistic techniques--nonsense, dreams, visions, and the creation of other worlds--to extend our understanding of this world. In particular, Prickett focuses on six writers (Lear, Carroll, Kingsley, MacDonald, Kipling, and Nesbit), tracing the development of their art form, their influence on each other, and how these writers used fantasy to question the ideology of Victorian culture and society.

Victorian Fantasy

Literature & Fiction

Prickett, Stephen

British & Irish

Indiana University Press

England and the French revolution (Context and commentary)

The French Revolution had repercussions right across Europe and for the English it forced a prolonged and turbulent re-appraisal of the entire structure of their society.

England and the French Revolution (Context and Commentary)

MACMILLAN PUB. LTD.

An increasing number of contemporary scientists, philosophers and theologians downplay their professional authority and describe their work as simply "telling stories about the world". If this is so, literary criticism can and should be applied to all these fields. Yet story telling is neither innocent nor empty-handed. Register, rhetoric, and imagery all manipulate in their own ways. Above all, irony emerges as the natural mode of our modern fragmented culture. Since the eighteenth century there have been only two possible ways of understanding the world--the fundamentalist and the ironic.

Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700-1999

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

During the later eighteenth century the Bible underwent a shift in interpretation so radical as to make it virtually a different book from what it had been a hundred years earlier. Even as historical criticism suggested that the Bible's text was neither stable nor original, the new notion of the Bible as a cultural artifact became a paradigm of all literature. Not merely was English, German and French Romanticism steeped in Biblical references of a new kind, but theories of literature and criticism came to be Biblically derived.

Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible

Originally published in 1980, this is a study of the 'romanticism' of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Their concern with creativity, and the conditions that helped or hindered their own artistic development, produced a new concept of mental growth - a 'modern' view of the mind as organic, active, and unifying. In particular, we see how their aesthetics evolved from a personal and intuitional need to reaffirm 'value' in their own lives. Their discovery of the fundamental ambiguity of such intuition is discussed in relation to some ideas of Empson, Gombrich, and Ehrenzweig. As well as an essay in criticism, this is a contribution to the history of ideas, drawing together points in the background of philosophical and psychological theory from Hartley and Wesley to John Stuart Mill. Since many of our ideas about imagination, symbolism, and creativity are ultimately derived from Coleridge and Wordsworth, this is a book for students of romantic and modern literature.

Coleridge and Wordsworth: The Poetry of Growth

Modern scholarship has tended to separate literature and theology. Yet it is impossible to understand the ideas of such Victorian theologians as Hare and Maurice, Keble and Newman without reference to contemporary literary criticism - just as it is impossible to understand criticism of the period (and the sensibility it implies) isolated from its theology. This book is an attempt to reinterpret a whole theological tradition in the light of its members' views on language and poetry, and associated ideas of imagination, myth and symbol. Dr Prickett argues that Coleridge and Wordsworth began a theological revolution by reintroducing to the Anglican Church a mode of thinking that had become submerged, or died out. "Their 'organic' aesthetics, with roots both in England and Germany, carried with them a theory of symbolism and of the unconscious, which, while originally derived from theology, provided an independent and parallel tradition to contemporary 'Paleyite' apologetic. From them Maurice, Keble and Newman were able to draw the conception of an 'idea' as living and creative, and of the Church itself as 'poetic'.

Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church

Modern scholarship has tended to separate literature and theology. Yet it is impossible to understand the ideas of such Victorian theologians as Hare and Maurice, Keble and Newman without reference to contemporary literary criticism - just as it is impossible to understand criticism of the period (and the sensibility it implies) isolated from its theology. This book is an attempt to reinterpret a whole theological tradition in the light of its members' views on language and poetry, and associated ideas of imagination, myth and symbol. Dr Prickett argues that Coleridge and Wordsworth began a theological revolution by reintroducing to the Anglican Church a mode of thinking that had become submerged, or died out. "Their 'organic' aesthetics, with roots both in England and Germany, carried with them a theory of symbolism and of the unconscious, which, while originally derived from theology, provided an independent and parallel tradition to contemporary 'Paleyite' apologetic. From them Maurice, Keble and Newman were able to draw the conception of an 'idea' as living and creative, and of the Church itself as 'poetic'.

Religion & Spirituality

Originally published in 1980, this is a study of the 'romanticism' of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Their concern with creativity, and the conditions that helped or hindered their own artistic development, produced a new concept of mental growth - a 'modern' view of the mind as organic, active, and unifying. In particular, we see how their aesthetics evolved from a personal and intuitional need to reaffirm 'value' in their own lives. Their discovery of the fundamental ambiguity of such intuition is discussed in relation to some ideas of Empson, Gombrich, and Ehrenzweig. As well as an essay in criticism, this is a contribution to the history of ideas, drawing together points in the background of philosophical and psychological theory from Hartley and Wesley to John Stuart Mill. Since many of our ideas about imagination, symbolism, and creativity are ultimately derived from Coleridge and Wordsworth, this is a book for students of romantic and modern literature.

Prickett charts the schism, opened at the end of the oighteenth century, between biblical hermeneutics and literary criticism. This split has profound implications for both contemporary biblical translation and literary theory. The author investigates the critical commonplace that religious language is essentially poetic, and traces the development of that view in the writings of Dennis and Vico, Herder and Eichhorn, Ccoleridge and Arnold, Wordsworth and Hopkins, and Austin Farrer and Paul Ricouer. This concept continues to provide a terminology for discussing narrative that can no longer be interpreted literally or allegorically, but has also led some critics to devise inadequate translation theories and conceptions of metaphor.

Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation

The Bible (Landmarks of World Literature)

This study focuses on the Bible as a landmark of literature, showing both how it has influenced writers through the ages and how it in turn has been influenced by contemporary literature. It describes what is known about the historical context of the documents, the changes of interpretation they have undergone over the centuries, and the problems and influence of various translations, ranging from Tyndale to the Good News Bible.

Barnes, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prickett, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Prickett, Stephen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prickett, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Victorian Fantasy

England and the French Revolution (Context and Commentary)

Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700-1999

Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible

Coleridge and Wordsworth: The Poetry of Growth

Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church

Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church

Coleridge and Wordsworth: The Poetry of Growth

Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation

The Bible (Landmarks of World Literature)