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Introduction: Borders and Border Crossings in the Victorian Periodical Press
Victorian Periodicals Review ( IF 0.3 ) Pub Date : 2018-01-01 , DOI: 10.1353/vpr.2018.0028
Barbara Korte , Stefanie Lethbridge

things.) The rich semantics of the word explains the wide thematic range of papers held at the 2017 annual RSVP Conference on “Borders and Border Crossings in Victorian Periodicals.” It took place in Freiburg, a city in the border country of Germany, France, and Switzerland, and at a time when borders, and the question whether and by whom they should be crossed or not, had Victorian Periodicals Review 51:3 Fall 2018 372 just gained new political significance—so much so, in fact, that in some countries the conference website was blocked while it used the official conference title. This special issue of Victorian Periodicals Review addresses the diversity of Victorian encounters with borders and border crossings, investigating how they represented and negotiated these encounters in a medium that was deeply embedded in their lives. The contributions assembled here show how borders were perceived as permeable or closed, how they provoked comparison, drew attention to differences and similarities, and pointed to contact zones and fault lines. And, as this issue demonstrates, there is not only the cultural angle to consider. Several articles explore the concept of the border as inherent to the medium of the periodical press itself, whose production and consumption was structured by borders and crossings of different kinds. Borders and Mediality In many ways, the periodical is a publication form that crosses borders by definition, as Margaret Beetham and James Mussell have outlined.1 Forced to be topical, periodicals are closely interwoven with the everyday and thus cross the border between print culture and daily living more persistently than, for instance, more artistically self-conscious “literary” print products. Periodicals are polyphonous: assembling different authors and topics within one issue, sometimes on the same page, creating a space that puts the factual in dialogue with the fictional or combines the practical with the entertaining. Further, the single voice of the individual contribution tends to be interrupted, as longer items have to be serialized across several issues of the periodical. The periodicity and seriality that characterize the periodical press confronted Victorian readers with borders in terms of structure and materiality: the limits and layout of the page, the issue, the volume, the boundaries of letterpress and image as well as borders in the ornamental sense. “Physical boundaries are hard to define,” Margaret Beetham points out, as the periodical enters the world without hard covers but is stored in libraries in bound volumes that put several issues together or sees its serials re-enter the market in the form of a book.2 New opportunities in print technology, particularly the development of the woodcut, also opened up possibilities in layout that created fluid borders between the visual and the verbal and, in fact, partly did away with a strict separation between those two forms of communication. Periodicals typically made their readers criss-cross between different article types, as well as between letterpress and images. And finally, articles and images themselves often crossed borders and travelled from one periodical to another. More than that, decorative items, “conceived and shaped as 373 Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge physical expressions of a text rather than as accompaniments or explanations,” combined with letterpress content to create meaning and direct the interpretation processes of readers.3 The periodical could and did use its lack of homogeneity as a selling point, addressing different kinds of readers in the same issue. This was especially true of the family magazines, which provided sections for all members of a household. As Beetham concludes, the periodical “is by definition open-ended and resistant to closure.”4 But this, she also points out, tells only half the story. To counteract the heterogeneity and instabilities of a form which by necessity made so many borders permeable, Victorian periodicals tended to stress formal repetition and visual branding, which created new forms of stability and thus new boundaries. Visual emblems in particular served as clear signals of self-identification,5 and the repetition of mastheads, page layout, font, and overall structure created continuities that helped to interpret and place the unfamiliar: “In their telling of the new, periodicals accounted for new things, events, or phenomena by accommodating them within a world that had already been negotiated with their readers through repeated acts of telling, reading and buying.”6 Such repetitions of already familiar structures offered categorizations that pre-structured the interpretation of the characteristically polyvocal and potentially unstructured mixture of items found in periodicals. Items such as “Letters to the Editor,” “Notes,” or “Scientific Serials” might be found in the same issue and thus were placed in dialogue with each other, but the classifications also clearly separated these items by locating them in different discourses and investing them with different degrees of authority.7 In this sense, formal conventions created pathways that guided readers through the maze of material presented. Such divisions could further be emphasized by bibliographic codes, such as changing fonts or using decorative borders, which directed the reading sequence. While periodical publications (in contrast to books) encouraged both border crossings and the use of border markers to establish alternative forms of continuity and identity, the most productive forms of border maintenance and crossings are perhaps those occasions when both the material environment and the content of the periodical item combine in explorations of the border, as is the case in the various kinds of mobility with which Victorian periodicals engaged. Borders and Mobility Increased mobility was a signature cultural practice of the Victorian period. Geographical borders were physically crossed by great numbers of people and things through travel and emigration and in the trade and consumption of goods, including periodicals. Apart from travel and trade, mobility Victorian Periodicals Review 51:3 Fall 2018 374 provided many other occasions for a scrutiny of borders and border crossings: Victorian London was an international city, not only the heart of an empire but also a haven for exiles and refugees, especially during the midcentury revolutions on the Continent. The imperial project brought cultural and ethnic borders into relief, often in conjunction with an increased awareness of gender and class boundaries. Progressive modernization generated a new sensitivity to borders between old and new, past and present, real and supernatural (as in the many ghost stories published in Victorian periodicals). Periodicals attest to the popularity that different kinds of travel enjoyed in Victorian culture. As Kate Hill observes, travel at the time had special significance “as a dynamic mode of experiencing and ordering the world . . . through the ways in which it was narrated across media and genres and across and between spaces, places, cultures, and people. Not only is travel itself a form of movement, but the cultures, narrative forms, subjectivities, and spaces which it brings into contact are themselves fluid, shifting, and continually interacting in complex ways.”8 However, mobility not only made borders permeable and fluid; there was also a counter-movement, Hill notes, because the “confluence of shifting, fluid, and dynamic forces brought into play by travel also created . . . a determination to impose fixity and clear boundaries, to separate ‘here’ and ‘there,’ ‘us’ and ‘them.’”9 Whether fluid or fixed, borders are omnipresent in Victorian travel writing. One of the most famous fictional depictions of a border crossing is that of Jonathan Harker at the beginning of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), when a bridge over the Danube in Buda-Pest transports him from the familiar West into an unfamiliar and uncanny East. The border experiences described in Victorian factual travel writing, particularly in the everyday medium of the periodical, tended to be less perturbing than those in a Gothic novel, but they could be vexing, especially when there were so many borders to cross, as in pre-unified Germany. The British tourist was not amused when having to cope with—and change his good pounds into—the many different currencies of diverse petty states.10 However, crossing borders could also be exhilarating, not least for female travellers, whose crossings of physical borders so often also meant leaving behind or at least expanding the ideological boundaries that entrenched their lives. As Maria Frawley emphasizes, “For the Victorians, travel was all about the boundaries (between classes, sexes, and nations) that structured their experiences,” and female travel writers “oriented their accounts around these boundaries as well”: “By showcasing their adventures overseas, sharing their ideas about foreign cultures, and cultivating their own authority and expertise, they helped to expand women’s participation in the public sphere, in essence to redraw some of the discursive boundaries of their own culture.”11 375 Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge While Victorian travel and travel writing have received wide scholarly attention, few studies examine material from periodicals, even though they were read just as frequently, and arguably even more frequently and more widely, than books.12 Due to the different materialities of the two media, there are essential differences between travel writing in periodicals and in books. While a travel book typically gives the account of one journey, the periodical volume and sometimes even the single issue will feature a number of articles about different kinds of travellers and different travel destinations. Periodicals therefore have the potential to emphasize the reader’s sense of mobility a

中文翻译:

简介:维多利亚期刊出版社的边界和过境点

事物。)这个词的丰富语义解释了在 2017 年年度 RSVP 会议上举行的关于“维多利亚期刊中的边界和过境点”的广泛主题范围的论文。它发生在德国、法国和瑞士边境国家的城市弗莱堡,当时有边界,以及是否应该跨越边界以及由谁跨越边界的问题,维多利亚期刊评论 51:3 秋季 2018 372 刚刚获得了新的政治意义——事实上,在某些国家,会议网站在使用官方会议名称时被屏蔽。这期《维多利亚时代期刊评论》特刊探讨了维多利亚时代与边界和过境点相遇的多样性,调查了他们如何在深深植根于他们生活的媒介中代表和协商这些相遇。这里汇集的贡献展示了边界如何被视为可渗透或封闭的,它们如何引发比较,引起对差异和相似之处的关注,并指出接触带和断层线。而且,正如这个问题所表明的,不仅要考虑文化角度。几篇文章探讨了作为期刊媒体本身固有的边界概念,其生产和消费是由不同种类的边界和交叉构成的。边界和媒体 在很多方面,期刊是一种跨越国界的出版形式,正如玛格丽特·比瑟姆和詹姆斯·穆塞尔所概述的那样。1 被迫成为话题,期刊与日常生活紧密交织,从而跨越了印刷文化和印刷文化之间的边界。日常生活比,例如,更具艺术意识的“文学”印刷产品。期刊是复调的:在一个问题中汇集不同的作者和主题,有时在同一页面上,创造一个空间,将事实与虚构对话或将实用与娱乐相结合。此外,个人贡献的单一声音往往会被打断,因为较长的项目必须在期刊的几期中连载。周期性和连续性使维多利亚时代的读者在结构和物质性方面面临着周期性和连续性的特点:页面的限制和布局、问题、体积、凸版和图像的边界以及装饰意义上的边界。“物理边界很难定义,”Margaret Beetham 指出,当期刊进入世界时没有精装,而是以装订的形式储存在图书馆中,将几期放在一起,或者看到其连续出版物以书籍的形式重新进入市场。2 印刷技术的新机遇,特别是印刷技术的发展木刻,也开辟了布局的可能性,在视觉和语言之间创造了流畅的边界,事实上,部分消除了这两种交流形式之间的严格分离。期刊通常让他们的读者在不同的文章类型之间以及在凸版和图像之间纵横交错。最后,文章和图像本身经常跨越国界,从一个期刊传播到另一个期刊。不仅如此,装饰品,“被设想和塑造为 373 Barbara Korte 和 Stefanie Lethbridge 对文本的物理表达,而不是作为伴奏或解释,”结合凸版内容来创造意义并指导读者的解释过程。3 该期刊可以而且确实利用其缺乏同质性作为卖点,针对同一问题的不同类型的读者。家庭杂志尤其如此,它为家庭的所有成员提供版块。正如 Beetham 总结的那样,该期刊“从定义上说是开放式的,并且抗拒关闭。”4 但她也指出,这只是讲述了故事的一半。为了抵消一种形式的异质性和不稳定性,这种形式必然使如此多的边界具有渗透性,维多利亚时代的期刊倾向于强调形式重复和视觉品牌,这创造了新的稳定形式,从而创造了新的界限。视觉标志尤其是自我识别的清晰信号,5 标头、页面布局、字体和整体结构的重复创造了有助于解释和放置陌生事物的连续性:“在他们讲述新事物时,期刊占新事物、事件或现象,通过重复讲述、阅读和购买行为,将它们容纳在一个已经与读者协商过的世界中。”6 这种对已经熟悉的结构的重复提供了分类,预先构建了对特征的解释在期刊中发现的项目的多声和潜在的非结构化混合。诸如“致编辑的信”、“注释”等项目 ”或“Scientific Serials”可能出现在同一期中,因此被置于相互对话中,但分类也通过将它们置于不同的话语中并赋予它们不同程度的权威性来明确区分这些项目。 7从这个意义上说,正式惯例创造了引导读者通过呈现的材料迷宫的途径。这种划分可以通过书目代码进一步强调,例如改变字体或使用装饰性边框,指导阅读顺序。虽然定期出版物(与书籍相反)鼓励过境点和使用边界标记来建立连续性和身份的替代形式,边境维护和穿越的最富有成效的形式也许是那些物质环境和期刊内容结合起来探索边境的场合,就像维多利亚时代期刊所从事的各种流动性的情况一样。边界和流动性 增加流动性是维多利亚时期的标志性文化实践。大量的人和物通过旅行和移民以及包括期刊在内的商品贸易和消费实际跨越了地理边界。除了旅行和贸易,流动性 维多利亚时代期刊评论 51:3 2018 年秋季 374 为审查边界和过境点提供了许多其他场合:维多利亚时代的伦敦是一个国际城市,不仅是帝国的中心,也是流亡者和流放者的避风港。难民,尤其是在欧洲大陆的世纪中叶革命期间。帝国计划带来了文化和种族边界的缓解,通常与对性别和阶级边界的认识增强有关。渐进的现代化对新旧、过去与现在、真实与超自然之间的界限产生了新的敏感性(如维多利亚时代期刊上发表的许多鬼故事)。期刊证明了维多利亚时代文化中不同类型的旅行很受欢迎。正如凯特希尔所观察到的那样,当时的旅行“作为一种体验和安排世界的动态方式具有特殊意义。. . 通过跨媒体和流派以及跨空间、地点、文化和人的叙述方式。旅行本身不仅是一种运动形式,而且文化、叙事形式、主观性、它所接触的空间本身是流动的、不断变化的,并以复杂的方式不断相互作用。”8 然而,流动性不仅使边界具有渗透性和流动性;希尔指出,还有一种相反的运动,因为“旅行带来的变化、流动和动态力量的汇合也产生了。. . 决心强加固定和清晰的界限,将“这里”和“那里”、“我们”和“他们”分开。”9 无论是流动的还是固定的,边界在维多利亚时代的旅行写作中无处不在。最著名的过境虚构描绘之一是布拉姆·斯托克 (Bram Stoker) 的《德古拉 (Dracula)》(1897) 开头的乔纳森·哈克 (Jonathan Harker),当时布达佩斯 (Buda-Pest) 多瑙河上的一座桥将他从熟悉的西方带到了陌生而诡异的东方。维多利亚时代的真实旅行写作中描述的边境经历,尤其是在期刊的日常媒介中,它们往往比哥特小说中的更令人不安,但它们可能会令人烦恼,尤其是当有如此多的边界需要跨越时,例如在统一前的德国。这位英国游客在不得不应对各种小国的多种不同货币时,并没有感到好笑。10 然而,跨越边界也可能令人振奋,尤其是对于女性旅行者而言,她们跨越物理边界如此通常还意味着抛弃或至少扩大根深蒂固的意识形态界限。正如玛丽亚·弗劳利 (Maria Frawley) 所强调的那样,“对于维多利亚时代的人来说,旅行就是构建他们体验的界限(阶级、性别和国家之间)”,而女性旅行作家“也围绕这些界限进行了描述”:“通过展示她们在海外的冒险经历,分享她们对外国文化的看法,以及培养她们自己的权威和专业知识,她们帮助扩大了女性在公共领域的参与,实质上是重新划定了她们自己文化的一些话语边界。”11 375 Barbara Korte 和 Stefanie Lethbridge 虽然维多利亚时代的旅行和旅行写作受到了广泛的学术关注,但很少有研究检查期刊材料,即使它们的阅读频率与书籍一样,甚至可以说比书籍更频繁和更广泛。 12 由于不同两种媒体的物质性,期刊和书籍中的旅行写作有着本质的区别。虽然旅行书通常会记录一次旅行,期刊卷,有时甚至是单期都会刊登许多关于不同类型旅行者和不同旅行目的地的文章。因此,期刊有可能强调读者的流动感
更新日期:2018-01-01
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