About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherSTATE University of New York Press

ISBN-100791444260

ISBN-139780791444269

eBay Product ID (ePID)1077515

Product Key Features

Number of Pages331 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NamePromising Language : Betrothal in Victorian Law and Fiction

SubjectGeneral, Political

Publication Year1999

TypeTextbook

AuthorRandall Craig

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height1 in

Item Weight16 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN99-022478

Dewey Edition21

Reviews"I like the way Craig considers several strands of Victorian thinking about language, from philosophy and philology to law and literature. He does a fine job of establishing the various nuances, contradictions, and parallels present in the ways Victorian writers and thinkers conceptualized language and social contracts. This is fascinating material, and particularly well handled in those early chapters where he discusses the various disciplines and their approaches to language. Craig's scholarship is also admirable; he has a clear and comprehensive knowledge of the relevant works." -- Ruth Ann Smalley, College of Saint Rose "What is likeable, interesting, and above all significant about Craig's book is his discovery of a fresh language-centered and law-centered framework for a century of novel-writing. The discovery lights up even those classic novels that might seem to have exhausted commentary." --Robert L. Caserio, author of The Novel in England, 1900-1950: History and Theory

Grade FromCollege Graduate Student

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal823/.809355

Table Of ContentForeword: Cross Your Fingers... Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Promising: Language/Narrative/Law 1. Language and the Victorians 2. Victorian Promises 3. Legal Fictions: Narrating Breach of Promise 4. Engaging Lies in Jane Eyre 5. Right Speaking in Adam Bede 6. Promising Marriage in The Egoist 7. Questioning Rhetoric in Can You Forgive Her? 8. Dying Promises in The Wings of the Dove Afterword: Cross Your Heart... Notes Works Cited Cases Cited Index

SynopsisArgues that Victorian legal, linguistic, and cultural attitudes toward promises--especially promises to marry--had a formative effect on novels of the period., Promising Language explores the linguistic and social ramifications of promising, and specifically promising to marry, in Victorian fiction. The concept of the promise--as speech act, as social practice and legal contract, and as structural principle and topos--lies at the intersection of several emergent nineteenth-century discourses: the science of language (notably etymology and philology), utilitarian jurisprudence (especially the freedom of contract applied to personal relations), and the aesthetics of the novel (predominantly realism). With this in mind, Craig offers new readings of several classic Victorian novels, including Pickwick Papers, Jane Eyre, Adam Bede, The Egoist, and The Wings of the Dove., Argues that Victorian legal, linguistic, and cultural attitudes toward promises--especially promises to marry--had a formative effect on novels of the period. Promising Language explores the linguistic and social ramifications of promising, and specifically promising to marry, in Victorian fiction. The concept of the promise-as speech act, as social practice and legal contract, and as structural principle and topos-lies at the intersection of several emergent nineteenth-century discourses: the science of language (notably etymology and philology), utilitarian jurisprudence (especially the freedom of contract applied to personal relations), and the aesthetics of the novel (predominantly realism). With this in mind, Craig offers new readings of several classic Victorian novels, including Pickwick Papers, Jane Eyre, Adam Bede, The Egoist, and The Wings of the Dove.

LC Classification NumberPR878.B47C73 2000