The Material Turn in Victorian Studies

Abstract

The Victorians were fascinated with objects and things -but recent scholarship has proved equally fascinated with this Victorian obsession. Examining the rise of the 'commodity' in Victorian culture, this article goes on to trace how consumerism, semiotics and the rise of cultural studies have provided new approaches to Victorian culture and commodification.

Writing as Material Practice: Substance, surface and medium

“…Particular attention is being paid to the materiality of paper-based writing, of the 19 th century (Hack 2005;Hall 2000;Marsden 2006;von Mucke 1999), as part of a general 'material turn' (Pykett 2005) in Victorian studies inspired largely by the work of Asa Briggs (1988) who asked historians to contemplate Victorian materialities, not least because the Victorians themselves were fascinated with objects and things.…”

Romantic objects, Victorian collections: Scribal relics and the authorial body

“…As Mole and others have pointed out, ‘what the Victorians made of Romanticism’ was something closely bound up with ‘material artifacts’ and the ‘cultural practices’ that clustered around them (Mole, 2017, p. 2). Coming in the wake of what Lyn Pykett in 2004 identified as a ‘material turn in Victorian studies’ (see Pykett, 2004), much recent work in the field has sought to shed light on the relationship between ‘bodies and things’ in the nineteenth century (Boehm, 2012). A number of different disciplines has contributed to this line of enquiry, ranging from literary studies and cultural history to the history of the book, material culture, and media studies.…”

Cultural biography of Victorian dirt

“…С конца прошлого столетия значительно возрос интерес к изучению материальной культуры, и викторианская эпоха с ее развитием массовой продукции и индустриальной революцией становится одним из самых популярных периодов (Pykett 2003). Предметом исследования профессора Свободного университета Берлина, филолога Забине Шюльтинг становится феномен грязи в художественной и документальной урбанистической литературе викторианской эпохи, а цельюисследование специфики викторианских нарративов о грязи, которые подвергаются значительным дискурсивным и эстетическим изменениям ближе к концу XIX столетия.…”