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Jan-Melissa Schramm explores the conflicted attitude of the Victorian novel to sacrifice, and the act of substitution on which it depends. The Christian idea of redemption celebrated the suffering of the innocent: to embrace a life of metaphorical self-sacrifice was to follow in the footsteps of Christ's literal Passion. Moreover, the ethical agenda of fiction relied on the expansion of sympathy which imaginative substitution was seen to encourage. But Victorian criminal law sought to calibrate punishment and culpability as it repudiated archaic models of sacrifice that scapegoated the innocent. The tension between these models is registered creatively in the fiction of novelists such as Dickens, Gaskell and Eliot, at a time when acts of Chartist protest, national sacrifices made during the Crimean War, and the extension of the franchise combined to call into question what it means for one man to 'stand for', and perhaps even 'die for', another.

Atonement in literature. --- English fiction --- Self in literature. --- Self-sacrifice in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature

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Shelley's Mirrors of Love confronts the myths and realities of Shelleyan narcissism and discovers an artist fiercely engaged with problems of (gender) identity, self-idolatry, and the nature of love itself. Rather than capitulating to what he called the principle of Self, Shelley obsessively explored its temptations, its dangers, and its antidotes. The book is largely psychobiographical in approach, working with the theories of Heinz Kohut and Jessica Benjamin, among others, as it closely analyzes Shelley's fiction, poetry, and letters.The book offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the poet's fluid gender identity, finding strong evidence of an imaginative transsexualism that allowed him to identify with real and imagined sister-spirits who exemplified the powers of love and sympathy, the greatest of Shelleyan ideals. The latter force receives particular attention as the study turns to scientific theories of Shelley's day, theories that helped the poet envision how the energy of electricity, sympathy, and sexuality converge to create the kind of erotically interpenetrating universe we see at the close of Prometheus Unbound.

Poets, English --- Psychoanalysis and literature --- Poetry --- Gender identity in literature. --- Self-sacrifice in literature. --- Narcissism in literature. --- Sisters in literature. --- Love in literature. --- Psychology. --- Psychological aspects. --- Shelley, Percy Bysshe, --- Knowledge --- English poets --- Self-love in literature --- Shelley, P. B. --- Sheli, Persi Bish, --- Hsüeh-lai, --- Hermit of Marlow, --- Marlow, --- Victor, --- Shelli, Persi-Bishi, --- Šéli, Pérsi Ba, --- Shilī, --- Selley, Persy Byss, --- Shelli, P., --- Шелли, Перси Биши, --- שלי, פרסי ביש --- שלי, פרסי ביש, --- שעלי, פוירסי --- شلي --- Śeli, Pārsi Bīśa, --- Shelley, Percy Bysshe --- Theology --- Shelley, percy bysshe, 1792-1822 --- Religion --- Literary criticism