Building on the formula of York Notes, this Advanced series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. Previous ed.: 1999
Ruth Robbins Books
Ruth Robbins's scholarship delves into the rich landscape of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century English literature, with a particular emphasis on the Decadent movement. Her work navigates the complexities of autobiography, literary theory, and the distinct voices of figures like Oscar Wilde and Arnold Bennett. Robbins critically examines how literary contexts are shaped, offering insightful analyses of the styles and themes that characterize this pivotal era. Her approach provides readers with a profound understanding of significant works and their creators.
Was the late nineteenth century 'Victorian' or 'modern'? Why did the New Woman disappear from literary history? Where did T. S. Eliot's poetics of the city come from?In this essential guide, Ruth Robbins explores an era often named an 'age of transition' which exists uneasily between the apparent certainties of the Victorians and the advent of a Modernist aesthetics of instability. Robbins considers some of the central literary categories and themes of the period (decadence, realism, nostalgia, New Woman writing, degeneration, imperialism and early modernism) in writings by both major and 'minor' writers, thereby creating a complex picture of transitions, continuities and breaks with the past. By examining this tumultuous era as an age in its own right, Pater to Forster, 1873-1924 offers the reader a rather different history of the late Victorians and Modernists, and retells that history from a new perspective.