Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-First Century

Brenda Ayres, Sarah E. Maier

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781783089437
• eBook ISBN: 9781783089451
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

With the purpose of introducing Marie Corelli to a new generation of readers and of reconsidering her works for generations familiar with them, Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-First Century demonstrates how provocative the author was as a public figure and how controversial and paradoxical were the views about womanhood and the supernatural pitched in her novels. This collection of original essays focuses on three major battles that engaged Corelli: her personal and public contentions, her mercurial constructions of gender and resistance to the New Woman modality and her untenable reconciliation of science with the supernatural. Corelli was often fighting several fronts at the same time; she rarely was not at war with someone including herself.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Chronology
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 STRATFORD-UPON-AVON’S “GREAT LITTLE LADY”
• Chapter 2 FROM “GIRL ALONE” TO “GENIUS”: CORELLI’S TRANSFORMING EPISTOLARY RHETORIC
• Chapter 3 MARIE CORELLI, THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND PUBLIC OPINION
• Chapter 4 “THE MUSES ARE WOMEN; SO ARE THE FATES”: CORELLI’S LITERARY MASQUERADE(S)
• Chapter 5 THE DEVIL & MISS CORELLI: RE-GENDERING THE DIABOLICAL AND THE REDEMPTIVE IN THE SORROWS OF SATAN
• Chapter 6 MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY UNBOUND: MASCULINITY IN ARDATH
• Chapter 7 OVER HER (UN)DEAD BODY: GENDER POLITICS, MEDIUMSHIP AND FEMINIST SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF MARIE CORELLI
• Chapter 8 “THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF”: THE THEOSOPHICAL NOVELS OF MARIE CORELLI
• Chapter 9 “SOMETHING VILE IN THE COMPOSITION”: MARIE CORELLI’S ZISKA, DECADENT PORTRAITURE AND THE NEW WOMAN
• List of Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index