Knowing the Past - by Suzy Anger (Hardcover)

About the Book

To what extent is it possible to know the past or to know other cultures? Can one describe the past without imposing one's own cultural, political, social, or personal preconceptions? Testing the current skepticism that insists that it is impossible...

Book Synopsis

To what extent is it possible to know the past or to know other cultures? Can one describe the past without imposing one's own cultural, political, social, or personal preconceptions? Testing the current skepticism that insists that it is impossible not to read one's own moment onto other times and cultures, the essays in this collection use the Victorian era as a means of developing a theory and critique of historical reclamation.In Knowing the Past, a distinguished group of Victorian scholars reflect on the Victorian past and examine the Victorians' own sophisticated contributions to debates about historical and cultural knowledge. Confronting, confirming, and opposing the skeptics, the essays provide close readings of particular texts. They encompass the larger constellation of ideas and questions that went into the making of the texts while participating in larger theoretical debates about knowledge of the past and other cultures.

Review Quotes

Anger's introduction sets out to recuperate values of objectivity and historical knowledge on ethical and political grounds.... One testimony to the general interest of Anger's project is the very high caliber of scholars appearing in this collection.... In sum, the volume offers a fairly hopeful perspective--or at least counters a casually cynical perspective--on our prospects for knowing other times and places. It does so, however, only in part by telling us things we didn't know. Its signature move is to urge renewed and candid reflections on how we know.

Suzy Anger's timely and fascinating collection, Knowing the Past, brings together essays by a pantheon of Victorian scholars.... A compelling collection of top-notch essays.

Taken as a whole, the essays not only make us reflect on the challenges of our practices as Victorianists, but they also compel us to interrogate our own stances, our own methodological assumptions, about attempting to encounter and understand artifacts from the past.

About the Author

Suzy Anger is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Victorian Interpretation, also from Cornell.