Reading the entranced mind: Late Victorian popular fictions of race

Thesis

The thesis examines why and how late Victorian popular writers repeatedly evoked the racial ‘other’ while depicting states of unconsciousness. In novels by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Grant Allen, Marie Corelli, Florence Marryat and Devkinandan Khatri, characters in a state of trance either enter an oriental psycho-geographical space or morph into a ‘primitive,’ ‘savage’ alternative version of themselves. The thesis demonstrates that through such moments of entrancement the novels conceptualize ...

Expand abstract

Authors: Sharma, N

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Popular Fiction; Victorian Literature; Orientalism
• Subjects: Literature