y separately published work icon Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Alternative title: Water
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... vol. 27 no. 1 2023 of Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies est. 2007 Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Water persists in the human imagination as a place of paradox: fear, foreboding, possibility and imagination. As an element so entirely vital for life, it provides a space for literal and metaphorical exploration, while oceanic depths act as a reminder of the unknowability of its vastness. As Una Chaudhuri aptly suggests, “A space beyond the normal realm of the human senses, the ocean has also long been a space beyond human thought, almost beyond human imagining” (149). Yet in this elemental power beyond human science, technology and civilisation, water becomes a near all-powerful force that responds and reacts to ill treatment, provoked by decay and corruption to obliterate human hands through tidal waves, floods and deluges. Recent anthropocenic oceanic studies have fixated on the devolution of the natural world through the lens of the ocean, an environment in which “diverse, beautiful ecological systems still dominated by coral reefs and fish will be replaced by ‘slime-rock’ systems dominated by algal and microbial mats and jellyfish” (Zalasiewicz 191). Similarly, Stacy Alaimo has asserted that the “Anthropocene seas will be paradoxical, anachronistic zones of terribly compressed temporality” in which “the future will move backwards, into a time when the oceans were devoid of whales, dolphins, fish, coral reefs, and a multitude of other species, but jellyfish (and algae) proliferated” (Alaimo 158). From another perspective, there are other scientists who continue to consider the ocean in mechanistic, industrial terms, maintaining an imperialist approach: “The ocean itself is our single greatest tool when properly harnessed and leveraged. That tool sits ready, and we have a good idea how to use it” (Palumbi 178).' (Water : An introduction: Helen Blythe, Alexandra Lewis, Lesa Scholl and Joanne Wilkes)

Notes

  • Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes: 

    Poetry by Carolyn Oulton

    Poetry by Schuyler Becker

    Poetry by VJ Rene

    Haunted Atlantic Waters: The Historic Traumas of Impressment, Slavery, and Whaling in Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers by Deborah Denenholz Morse

    Wonders in the Deep: Sailors and the Imagination in the Poetry of William Wordsworth by Aidan Wakely-Mulroney

    Neo-Victorian Oceanic Depths in Netflix’s 1899 by Janette Leaf

    “The inevitable steam-boat”: Archibald John Little and steam navigation on the Yangtze river by Silvia Granata

    Review of Anthony Sullivan, War Against the Slave Trade by Richard Gehrmann

    Review of Kate Holterhoff, Illustration in Fin-de-Siecle Transatlantic Romance Fiction by Robert Jenkins

    Review of Brusberg-Kiermeier Sublimation of Unfitness in Victorian Fiction by Robert Jenkins

    Review of Sarah Green, Sexual Restraint and Aesthetic Experience in Victorian Literary Decadence by Ryan Suckling

    Review of Dinter and Schafer-Althaus, Medicine and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, History, and Culture by Jacqueline Kolditz

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2023 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Our Mutual Corpsei"Lunge. Wrench. For the most part,", Alexandra Lewis , single work poetry (p. 1-2)
Belonging to Water (Maggie’s Erasure)i"Tingeing with a soft hue", Alexandra Lewis , single work poetry
Epigraph: “And water's a very particular thing—you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights and the wrongs of water, if you look at it straightforrard; for a river's a river, and if you've got a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it's no use telling me, Pivart's erigation and nonsense won't stop my wheel: I know what belongs to water better than that.” – Mr Tulliver, Book Second, Chapter 2, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss
(p. 3-4)
The Late Raini"Mademoiselle Hortense", Shale Preston , single work poetry (p. 5)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 9 Jan 2024 12:04:31
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