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OverviewHow Victorian authors engaged the imaginations of their readers and elevated the novel to new heights As novel publication exploded in nineteenth-century Britain, writers such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot learned from experience-sometimes grudgingly-that readers tend to make their own imaginative contributions to fictional worlds. Imagining Otherwise shows how Victorian writers acknowledged, grappled with, and ultimately enlisted the prerogative of readers to conjure alternatives and add depth to the words on the page. Debra Gettelman provides incisive new readings of novels such as Sense and Sensibility, Little Dorrit, and Middlemarch, exploring how novelists known for prescriptive and didactic narrative voices were at the same time exploring the aesthetic potential for the reader's independent imagination to lend nuance and authenticity to fiction. Modernist authors of the twentieth century have long been considered pioneers in cultivating the reader's capacity to imagine what is not said as part of the art of fiction. Gettelman uncovers the roots of this tradition of novel reading a century earlier and challenges literary criticism that dismisses this spontaneous, readerly impulse as being unworthy of serious examination. As readers demand novels with relatable characters and fan fiction grows in popularity, the reader's imagination has become a determining element of today's literary environment. Imagining Otherwise takes a deeper look at this history, offering a critical perspective on how we came to view fiction as a site of imaginative appropriation. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Debra GettelmanPublisher: Princeton University Press Imprint: Princeton University Press ISBN: 9780691260419ISBN 10: 0691260419 Pages: 240 Publication Date: 13 August 2024 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Not yet available, will be POD This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released. Table of ContentsReviewsAuthor InformationDebra Gettelman is associate professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |