The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature ed. by Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature ed. by Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer Kaylee N. Henderson (bio) Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer, eds., The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. xii + 540, $224 hardcover. This extensive collection, carefully compiled by Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer, provides an ample overview of the theoretical frameworks and topics pertaining to the study of Victorian literature. The companion's forty-five chapters are organized into six themed sections: "Genres and Movements," "Media Histories," "Victorian Discourses," "Formulations of Identity," "Science and Spirit," and "Spatiality and Environment." Each section contains chapters written by top scholars from around the globe, often the very scholars who wrote the foundational texts for their subjects. Each chapter provides a thorough overview of the topic, discussing both [End Page 462] pioneering texts and the most recent scholarship. Additionally, each chapter details the current challenges facing scholars and outlines directions for future research, often in relation to other topics and disciplines. Denisoff explains in the introduction, "We asked our authors not to write encyclopedic summaries of their subject but instead to use their own voices and styles to consider what somebody new to a field should know about the history of scholarship on the particular subject" (7). The authors represented in this collection clearly were mindful of this request, and despite the many voices, it never feels disjointed. Rather, the companion is an accessible and invaluable tool for scholars of Victorian literature. Denisoff notes the driving questions behind this collection: "What does Victorian studies engage with today, and how is it doing so?" (7). While he admits there are myriad responses to these compelling queries, the editors have worked to ensure that "in addition to addressing nineteenth-century values and concerns, it is a collection of twenty-first-century issues, critically positioning Victorian studies within the current social and political climate" (8). For example, in "Victorian Digital Humanities," Karen Bourrier explains that "new technologies were often first developed as aids to the disabled, only afterward finding broader use among the general population" (129). She notes that "the exchange also worked in reverse, with technologies for the able-bodied being adapted by the disabled," highlighting the influence of disability studies on the digital humanities through a shared goal of accessibility (129). Lynn Voskuil, in "Why Victorian Ecocriticism Matters," draws on the Victorian garden to introduce prevalent issues in Victorian ecocriticism, including "the role of empire in prompting both ecological innovation and environmental degradation; the acceleration of anthropogenic climate change during the nineteenth century; and the emergence of global perspectives to grasp the planetary scale of the ecological legacy we inherited from our Victorian forebears and the challenges we continue to share with them" (506). Linda K. Hughes's chapter on "Periodical Studies," the only one to focus solely on Victorian periodicals, details three major phases of periodical studies and the ongoing evolution of research methods and challenges within the subject. However, nearly every chapter in the collection touches on periodical studies and print culture in some way. For example, in "Short Forms: Serialization and Short Fiction," Susan David Bernstein proposes that "studying excerpts and abridged editions of long Victorian novels, to evaluate the experience of reading and design of writing short formats, even if one form—the serial installment or a chapter—is part of a larger text," can help us to avoid fetishizing wholeness and lead to "a theory and practice of Victorian short forms" (43). In "Feminism and the Canon," Talia Schaffer details the decades-long dominance of the canon wars and feminist criticism and their subsequent absence in work on Victorian [End Page 463] literary studies. She posits that "the feminist/noncanonical victory meant that its precepts could be taken for granted, its core assumptions remaining stubbornly unarticulated" (278). Arguing that critics must move beyond recovery work focused on biological females to instead "aim for feminist goals that benefit everyone regardless of their relation to female identity," Schaffer asserts, "'Feminism' ought to name our method, not our objects" (281). She explicitly points to the ways we can apply this "feminist strategy for reading" to areas like digital humanities and periodical studies. Andrew M. Stauffer...