Neo-Victorian Cannibalism

This Pivot examines a body of contemporary neo-Victorian novels whose uneasy relationship with the past can be theorised in terms of aggressive eating, including cannibalism. Not only is the imagery of eating repeatedly used by critics to comprehend neo-Victorian literature, the theme of cannibalism itself also appears overtly or implicitly in a number of the novels and their Victorian prototypes, thereby mirroring the cannibalistic relationship between the contemporary and the Victorian. Tammy Lai-Ming Ho argues that aggressive eating or cannibalism can be seen as a pathological and defining characteristic of neo-Victorian fiction, demonstrating how cannibalism provides a framework for understanding the genre’s origin, its conflicted, ambivalent and violent relationship with its Victorian predecessors and the grotesque and gothic effects that it generates in its fiction.

• neo-Victorian fiction
• Victorian fiction
• cannibalism in literature
• Bram Stoker
• Dracula
• Jane Eyre
• gothic literature
• Gaynor Arnold
• Richard Flanagan
• Charles Dickens
• Tom Holland
• Leslie S. Klinger
• Dacre Stoker
• Ian Holt
• Wide Sargasso Sea
• A.S. Byatt
• adaptations of Jane Eyre
• adaptations of Wurthering Heights
• Gothic fiction

“Neo-Victorian Cannibalism is … an appreciated and extremely well-researched new take on neo-Victorian literature, which might be of use for anyone studying neo-Victorian fiction, adaptation theory, or any of the novels analyzed in the book.” (Krisztina Jilling, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 26 (2), 2020)

• Hong Kong Baptist University , Kowlong Tong, Hong Kong

  Tammy Lai-Ming Ho

Tammy Lai-Ming Ho is Associate Professor of English, Hong Kong Baptist University. She is the founding co-editor of the Hong Kong-based international publication, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and an editor of Hong Kong Studies, the first peer-reviewed journal devoted to Hong Kong.