scholarly journals Béatrice Laurent (ed.), Sleeping Beauties in Victorian Britain, Cultural, Literary and Artistic Explorations of a Myth

Miranda ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Lambert-Charbonnier
Keyword(s):  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Sleeping Beauties

A Christmas Carol: Disability Conceptualised through Empathy and the Philosophy of ‘Technologically Useful Bodies’

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-191
Author(s):  
Ester Vidović
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Linguistic Approach

The article explores how two cultural models which were dominant in Great Britain during the Victorian era – the model based on the philosophy of ‘technologically useful bodies’ and the Christian model of empathy – were connected with the understanding of disability. Both cultural models are metaphorically constituted and based on the ‘container’ and ‘up and down’ image schemas respectively. 1 The intersubjective character of cultural models is foregrounded, in particular, in the context of conceiving of abstract concepts such as emotions and attitudes. The issue of disability is addressed from a cognitive linguistic approach to literary analysis while studying the reflections of the two cultural models on the portrayal of the main characters of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The studied cultural models appeared to be relatively stable, while their evaluative aspects proved to be subject to historical change. The article provides incentives for further study which could include research on the connectedness between, on one hand, empathy with fictional characters roused by reading Dickens's works and influenced by cultural models dominant during the Victorian period in Britain and, on the other hand, the contemporaries’ actual actions taken to ameliorate the social position of the disabled in Victorian Britain.

Arsenic in Victorian Britain

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Fraser Joyce, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Victorian Britain
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