Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810-1870

In its nuanced examination of a wide variety of Victorian theories of mind, including physiognomy, physiology, associationism, and cognitive philosophies, Amnesiac Selves draws a powerful portrait of the interaction between psychology and the novel in the years 1810-1870. Dames demonstrates the crucial role that novels played in forming a habit of diluting remembrance into secure, sentimental, and above all communal memories, habits that live on in the nostalgia still felt by their readers. In tracing the formative nostalgias of canonical British fiction, this study recalls for us what these novels so often ask us to forget. Provocative and original, Amnesiac Selves constitutes a major advance in studies of Victorian culture and literature.