eBook

Victorian Fetishism

Peter Melville Logan

2008,2009

Overview

Victorian Fetishism argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all \"primitive\" cultures with \"Primitive Fetishism,\" a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world—thunderstorms, trees, stones—is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby \"fetishizing\" fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory.

• Publisher: State University of New York Press,SUNY Press
• Subject: 19th century / Anthropology and Archaeology : Cultural Anthropology / Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888 / Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888 -- Criticism and interpretation / British Studies / Criticism / Criticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century / Criticism and interpretation / Cultural Studies : Cultural Studies / Culture / Culture -- Philosophy -- History -- 19th century / Culture in literature / Eliot, George, 1819-1880 / Eliot, George, 1819-1880 -- Criticism and interpretation / English prose literature / English prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism / European Studies / Fetishism in literature / Great Britain / Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 19th century / HISTORY / HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century / History : History / History : History of Science / History and criticism / HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General / Intellectual life / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh / Literature : English Literature / Literature : Nineteenth-Century Studies / Philosophy / Primitivism in literature / Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett), 1832-1917 / Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett), 1832-1917 -- Criticism and interpretation / Tylor, Edward Burnett, Sir, 1832-1917
• ISBN: 0791476618, 9780791476611, 9780791476628, 0791476626, 9780791477281, 0791477282