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Abstract:

The authors of neo-Victorian fiction, which is considered part of Postmodern literature, consciously fill their works with references to a specific historical period and recognizable national localities. Such texts artistically bring back to life many cultural, philosophical and psychological characteristics of people and peoples of the British Empire as it appeared during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), at the same time attempting to rethink the past and vindicate much of what, back then, used to be seen as marginal. The neo-Victorian fiction depicts the past in such a way as to cater to the tastes of the present-day English-speaking readers, to whom the values of post-colonialism, globalism and post-Freudianism are of a particular urgency. The literary canon of neo-Victorianism began to take shape in the 1960s (see J. Rhys and J. Fowles) as a rejoinder against Modernist reaction towards the eminent Victorians and their aesthetical legacy. In the 1990s, A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession set the standard for a new kind of quasi-historical professorial prose probing into the period, and many neo-Victorian writings attempted to follow the suit. While acknowledging the multiplicities of modern neo-Victorian texts ranging from serious literature to pulp fiction, here we focus on a particular set of patterns and rhythms within neo-Victorian prose, paying attention to the “neo-Browningian” features of style associated with the Victorian genre of “dramatic monologue.”

Keywords: Victorian, post-Victorian, neo-Victorian; neo-Brontëan, neo-Dickensian, neo-Browningian pastiche; monologues of the mentally insecure; the ‘dramatic monologue’ technique.