In this bold new book, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth traces the broadly established challenges to modernity that now confront historians and citizens of Western societies generally. She puts forward a clear definition of both The Modern Condition and of The Discursive Condition that challenges it, and she briefly introduces the most important practical implications of those challenges to accepted definitions and tools of thought. After decades of conflicting work on related issues this book provides a succinct, lucid and wide-ranging discussion of what is at stake. Drawing on a broad range of intellectual and cultural history from Homer to Hayden White and from the arts to physics, philosophy and politics, this book defines a new stage in the history of ideas. With the practice and assumptions of historians at its core, the book demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary practice in addressing the big questions currently confronting the humanities and social sciences.

This work traces the form of the Victorian novel, as well as placing it in an historical context. It analyzes the key novelists of the period - including George Eliot, Dickens, the Brontes, Thackeray, Trollape and Hardy - in terms of the social and cultural conditions forming a backdrop to their work, such as the controversial work of Darwin, and the Industrial Revolution. This combination of historical survey and literary critique comes together to create an overview of the Victorian novel. The issues in Victorian fiction discussed include: the question of the individual as historical self; the idea of history; social and collective order; the "women question"; gender and culture; and the laws of nature - contrasting with the Romantics' view. This work should be useful background reading for undergraduate students of English literature and Victorian studies.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415014999

In this bold new book, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth traces the broadly established challenges to modernity that now confront historians and citizens of Western societies generally. She puts forward a clear definition of both The Modern Condition and of The Discursive Condition that challenges it, and she briefly introduces the most important practical implications of those challenges to accepted definitions and tools of thought. After decades of conflicting work on related issues this book provides a succinct, lucid and wide-ranging discussion of what is at stake. Drawing on a broad range of intellectual and cultural history from Homer to Hayden White and from the arts to physics, philosophy and politics, this book defines a new stage in the history of ideas. With the practice and assumptions of historians at its core, the book demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary practice in addressing the big questions currently confronting the humanities and social sciences.