Please tell us about your research at LCE
I will join LCE through the Erasmus+ cooperation between the Department of English at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Oslo. In my project, I explore shame as a key emotion in the Victorian novel. Even though research on Victorian fiction has privileged sympathy as a central emotional mechanism, I argue that shame functions as an important medium in novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins and Joseph Conrad. The term ‘shame’ encompasses different dimensions: 1) shame as a painful emotional experience; 2) shaming as a rhetorical practice; and 3) a sense of shame that reflects someone’s awareness of and knowledge about cultural norms and shared values. Shame is such a compelling object of study because it is situated at a crossroads between body and mind, self and other as well as individual and collective.
In my project, I am particularly interested in the political dimension of shame and the ways in which it is used to navigate fundamental social, economic and cultural transformations. In the novels, shame not only shapes the dynamics between the characters in the fictional world, but also the relations between narrator and story as well as text and readers. My analyses therefore focus on the following questions: first, what role does shame play in the novels – who feels ashamed, who shames, and with what intentions and effects? Second, how is shame narrativized and through which techniques is it represented in the texts? Third, to the extent that shame always involves an audience, how do the novels appeal to and position readers in relation to the text?
What is your favourite kind of reading experience? Are there any specific literary works that you would like to recommend to us?
Lately, my reading has focused on the figure of the female detective in Victorian sensation fiction, in particular in the works of Wilkie Collins. Whenever my reading is not immediately research- or teaching-related, however, I turn to contemporary fiction. This year, I particularly enjoyed the millennial fiction of Irish writer Naoise Dolan (who is often compared to Sally Rooney). I also liked Ruth Ozeki’s quirky The Book of Form and Emptiness, which won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and found Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow a page-turner.