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THE MORAL AND LITERARY CHARACTER OF BULWER'S NOVELS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2012

RICHARD HENRY DANA JR.  and
Allan C. Christensen
RICHARD HENRY DANA JR.
Affiliation:
John Cabot University, Rome
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Extract

While illuminating and justifying the contemporary appreciation of Edward Bulwer's early novels, Richard Henry Dana discerns in his Harvard thesis of 1837 a Bulwerian strategy that he would employ himself in Two Years Before the Mast. Both the undergraduate thesis and Two Years derive from the experiences of Dana's famous voyage, which have led him to recognise the power of literature to exercise a moral force. In the practice of Bulwer, which Dana would seek to emulate, literature becomes a means for liberating voices that the predominating social forces have been hitherto suppressing.

Type
Special Effects
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Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 289 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

WORKS CITED

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