Title The afterlife of enclosure : British realism, character, and the commons / Carolyn Lesjak

Published Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2021] ©2021

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 241 pages) : illustrations Contents Introduction : realism and the commons -- The persistence of the commons, the persistence of enclosure -- Dickensian types and a culture of the commons -- Eliot, cosmopolitanism, and the commons -- The typical and the tragic in Hardy's geopolitical commons -- Afterword : old and new enclosures Summary "The enclosure of the commons, space once available for communal use, was not a singular event but an act of "slow violence" that transformed lands, labor, and basic concepts of public life leading into the nineteenth century. The Afterlife of Enclosure examines three canonical British writers--Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy--as narrators of this history, the long duration and diffuse effects of which required new literary forms to capture the lived experience of enclosure and its aftermath. This study boldly reconceives the realist novel, not as an outdated artifact, but as witness to the material and environmental dispossession of enclosure--and bearer of utopian energies. These writers reinvented a commons committed to the collective nature of the social world. Illuminating the common at the heart of the novel--from common characters to commonplace events--Carolyn Lesjak reveals an experimental figuration of the lost commons, once a defining feature of the British landscape and political imaginary. In the face of privatization, climate change, new enclosures, and the other forms of slow violence unfolding globally today, this book looks back to a literature of historical trauma and locates within it a radical path forward."-- Provided by publisher Analysis character cosmopolitanism enclosure environmental humanities geopolitical aesthetic political ecology realism slow violence the commons Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Carolyn Lesjak is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of Working Fictions: A Genealogy of the Victorian Novel (2006) Print version record Subject Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Criticism and interpretation Eliot, George, 1819-1880 -- Criticism and interpretation Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Criticism and interpretation Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Eliot, George, 1819-1880 Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Commons in literature. Inclosures in literature. Working class in literature. Realism in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Commons in literature English fiction Inclosures in literature Realism in literature Working class in literature Genre/Form Literary criticism Criticism, interpretation, etc. Literary criticism. Critiques littéraires. Form Electronic book LC no. 2020035329 ISBN 9781503627826 1503627829

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