| Victorian Prism: Refractions of the Crystal Palace Contributor(s): Buzard, James (Editor), McGann, Jerome J. (Editor), Tucker, Herbert F. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0813926033 ISBN-13: 9780813926032 Publisher: University of Virginia Press OUR PRICE: $49.01 Product Type: Hardcover Published: July 2007 Annotation: Last year a series of conferences in New York, Santa Cruz, and London commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Crystal Palace, the architectural breakthrough at the Great Exhibition of 1851 that symbolized the quintessence of British industrial and technological progress. Gathered here are the best of the papers from those conferences by a number of leading scholars in their fields. Each essay makes an important new contribution to thinking about the place occupied both materially and discursively by the Crystal Palace and other 19th- and 20th-century exhibitions in the struggle to come to meaningful terms with the modern world. With essays from cultural and social historians, literary critics, and art historians, the collection as a whole focuses on how these exhibitions, in attempting to define the cultures of their day, incorporated a range of conflicting ideologies and agendas, in fact compromising their ability to convey a unified message about modernity. The volume also addresses the ways in which the cultural processes and tendencies brought together in these exhibitions have been refracted down to the present, thus informing and complicating our own relationship to modernity and postmodernity.After an initial query by Eileen Gillooly last January, Joseph Childers followed up in August by sending the proposal. Recognizing both the quality of its preparation and the prominence of the editors and contributors ("the lineup of scholars is scarcely to be faulted"), series editor Jerry McGann urged outside review of the proposal for what he takes to be an attractive collection and a promising addition to the Victorian series. I agree. The volume would build not only on our previouspublication of Barbara Black's book, On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums (2000) but also on John Burris's Exhibiting Religion (2001). |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 941.081 |
| LCCN: 2006036265 |
| Series: Victorian Literature & Culture (Hardcover) |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6.43" W x 9.38" (1.46 lbs) 352 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: From the moment it opened on the first of May in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was one of the defining events of the Victorian period. It stood not only as a visible symbol of British industrial and technological progress but as a figure for modernity--a figure that has often been thought to convey one coherent message and vision of culture and society. This volume examines the place occupied both materially and discursively by the Crystal Palace and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century exhibitions in the struggle to understand what it means to be modern. Initiated in part by a number of conferences held in 2001 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Crystal Palace, Victorian Prism provides new perspectives to historians, literary critics, art historians, and others interested in how a large glass building in a London park could refract meaning from Caracas to Calcutta. In its investigations of the ways of knowing and shaping the world that emerged during the planning and execution of this first "world's fair," Victorian Prism not only restores the multiplicity of experiences and other determining factors to our picture of the Great Exhibition; it makes reevaluation of the exhibition and its legacies the occasion for reevaluating modernity itself in its broadest sense--as the cultures, potentialities, and liabilities of the Enlightenment. With essays by a number of leading scholars in their fields, the collection as a whole focuses on how these exhibitions, in attempting to define the cultures of their day, incorporated a range of conflicting ideologies and agendas. In doing so, it offers a richer, more complex understanding of the experience of modernity than we have previously acknowledged. The volume also addresses the ways in which the cultural processes and tendencies brought together in these exhibitions have been refracted down to the present, thus informing and complicating our own relationship to both modernity and postmodernity. |