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  1. Home
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  3. The Brontës and the Idea of the Human
  • Cited by 13
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2019
Print publication year:
2019
Online ISBN:
9781316651063
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316651063
Subjects:
Literature, History of Ideas, English Literature 1830-1900, Politics and International Relations
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (115)
Information

Book description

What does it mean to be human? The Brontë novels and poetry are fascinated by what lies at the core - and limits - of the human. The Brontës and the Idea of the Human presents a significant re-evaluation of how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë each responded to scientific, legal, political, theological, literary, and cultural concerns in ways that redraw the boundaries of the human for the nineteenth century. Proposing innovative modes of approach for the twenty-first century, leading scholars shed light on the relationship between the role of the imagination and new definitions of the human subject. This important interdisciplinary study scrutinises the notion of the embodied human and moves beyond it to explore the force and potential of the mental and imaginative powers for constructions of selfhood, community, spirituality, degradation, cruelty, and ethical behaviour in the nineteenth century and its fictional worlds.

Reviews

'This collection of 13 essays offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the Brontës, especially Charlotte … The present volume's close readings of the Brontës' novels lead to fresh insights … Recommended.'

S. A. Parker Source: Choice

‘Alexandra Lewis’s edited collection, The Brontës and the Idea of the Human: Science, Ethics, and the Victorian Imagination, expands this focus from the cultural to the universal.’

Lydia Craig Source: British Association for Victorian Studies Newsletter

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