Reviewed by:

• Plotting the News in the Victorian Novel by Jessica R. Valdez
• Hazel Mackenzie (bio)

At the turn of the millennium, Jonathan Culler noted the ascendancy of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities over scholarly understandings of the nation, particularly within literary studies. Anderson is ever cited, commented Culler, but his claims are rarely actually discussed at any length (30). The field has moved on since then, with postcolonial scholars in particular providing new perspectives on Anderson's work, but Jessica Valdez's monograph is nonetheless refreshing in its willingness to problematize Anderson's thesis. Through discussion of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and Israel Zangwill, Valdez points to the manner in which specific iterations of both the newspaper and the novel complicate Anderson's positioning of them [End Page 99] as creating a space that allowed for the imagining of society as a nation. Valdez takes pains to point out the distinctions between the novel and the newspaper in this regard, most particularly in the eyes of nineteenth-century writers who were experienced in writing both as journalists and novelists. Valdez argues that in the nineteenth-century novel the newspaper is recurrently depicted as a disruptive force, alienating individuals and rupturing communal bonds, in opposition to Anderson's view of it as a space of imagined togetherness, while the novel creates a sense of unity through its ability to create larger patterns and cohesive plots.

Ostensibly, the monograph's raison d'être is to elucidate "the ways that nineteenth century novels envision newspapers and incorporate, problematise, and transmute news stories into fictional narrative" (1). In this Valdez builds on the work of Matthew Rubery in The Novelty of Newspapers (2009). However, as Valdez notes, Rubery's interest is focused on the use of journalistic narratives in nineteenth-century novels and their representation of newspapers within their pages, while her own interests are on how such novels "represent news to reflect on discursive formations and aesthetic choices more broadly" (56). Thus while there is discussion of the representation of newspapers and newspaper reading woven throughout the monograph, Valdez spends as much, if not more, time on the representation of other forms of information circulation within the novels discussed and their valorization of the novel itself as a mode of truth-telling and a space for the formation of community. The aesthetic and generic attributes of the novels discussed is a more pervasive topic of discussion than "the news" per se. The concern of the novelists under study, at least as Valdez positions them, is not so much the news or newspapers but rather the novel. This does not entirely contradict Valdez's early statement that these novelists act as proto-media theorists but the medium that they are primarily intent upon, from this account anyway, is the novel (2).

Valdez is at her strongest in her second chapter on Trollope. She argues convincingly that Trollope represents the newspaper in both his Barsetshire and Palliser series as a negative, alienating force. In Trollope's worlds, Valdez claims, newspapers present reductive cynical caricatures of his well-rounded three-dimensional characters, which cause those characters to go through intense journeys of self-examination. She also argues, however, that Trollope utilizes the same techniques in his treatment of the press, and those employed in its service, within his fiction. And who can argue that Tom Towers is anything but a satirical caricature? But Valdez seems to underestimate the extent to which Trollope incorporates such caricature into even his most well-rounded characters. In The Warden (1855) in particular there is scarcely a character that escapes the narrator's pointed satire, not even the eponymous hero. [End Page 100]

In Valdez's third chapter, she notes and objects to the critical commonplace that the sensation novel bears a strong resemblance to and reliance on the newspaper. Yet, her analysis reinforces the similarities between the two genres, even if that resemblance is based upon melodrama rather than realism in Valdez's view. And while she convincingly argues both...

审核人：

• 杰西卡·瓦尔迪兹（Jessica R.Valdez）在维多利亚时代小说中的新闻策划
• 榛树麦肯齐（生物）

千年之交，乔纳森·库勒（Jonathan Culler）注意到本尼迪克特·安德森（Benedict Anderson）的《想象的社区》（Imagined Community）在对国家的学术理解上，特别是在文学研究方面的优势。卡勒评论说，安德森曾被引用过，但很少有人讨论他的主张（30）。从那以后，这个领域一直在发展，特别是后殖民主义学者对安德森的著作提供了新的观点，但是杰西卡·瓦尔迪兹的专着仍然对将安德森的论文问题化的意愿感到耳目一新。通过对查尔斯·狄更斯，安东尼·特罗洛普，玛丽·伊丽莎白·布拉德登，威尔基·柯林斯和以色列·桑威尔的讨论，瓦尔迪兹指出了报纸和小说的特定版本使安德森的故事复杂化的方式。创造了一个将社会想象成一个国家的空间。瓦尔迪兹不遗余力地指出小说和报纸在这方面的区别，特别是在十九世纪作家中，他们既是记者又是小说家。瓦尔迪兹认为，在十九世纪的小说中，报纸经常被描述为一种破坏性力量，疏远个人并破坏社会纽带，这与安德森将其视为想象中的团结空间的观点相违背，而小说则通过其小说创造了一种团结感。能够创建更大的图案和内聚图。

从表面上看，这本专着的存在理由是阐明“ 19世纪小说预见报纸并将新闻故事纳入，编成问题并将其转变为虚构叙事的方式”（1）。Valdez在此基础上借鉴了马修·鲁伯里（Matthew Rubery）在《报纸的新颖性》中的作品（2009）。但是，正如瓦尔德兹（Valdez）所指出的那样，鲁伯瑞（Rubry）的兴趣集中在19世纪小说中新闻叙事的使用以及报纸在其页面中的代表，而她自己的兴趣在于这类小说“如何代表新闻以反思话语形式和审美选择”。更广泛地讲”（56）。因此，在讨论整个专着中报纸和报纸阅读的表现形式的讨论时，瓦尔迪兹花了很多（如果不是更多的话）时间来讨论所讨论的小说中其他形式的信息流通，以及将小说本身作为一种价值来加以重视。讲真话的方式和形成社区的空间。所讨论小说的美学和一般属性比“新闻”更普遍。。至少在瓦尔迪兹（Valdez）定位时，所研究的小说家所关注的不是新闻或报纸，而是小说。这并不完全与瓦尔迪兹早期关于这些小说家充当原始媒体理论家的说法相矛盾，但是从这个角度来讲，他们主要的目的是小说（2）。

Valdez在关于Trollope的第二章中表现最强。她有说服力地指出，特罗洛普在巴塞特郡和帕利斯尔的系列小说中都代表报纸，是消极的，疏远的力量。Valdez声称，在Trollope的世界中，报纸呈现出他全面的三维人物的还原讽刺讽刺漫画，这使这些人物经历了自省的艰难历程。她还认为，在小说中，特罗洛普（Trollope）在对待新闻界和在新闻界工作时采用了相同的技术。谁能辩称汤姆·塔只是讽刺漫画呢？但是瓦尔迪兹似乎低估了特罗洛普将这种讽刺漫画融入到他最全面的角色中的程度。在看守（1855）特别是几乎没有一个人物能够摆脱叙述者的尖刻讽刺，甚至没有同名英雄。[结束页100]

在瓦尔迪兹（Valdez）的第三章中，她指出并反对批评小说，这部轰动的小说与报纸非常相似并依赖报纸。但是，即使瓦尔德兹认为这是基于情节剧而不是现实主义，她的分析也加强了这两种类型之间的相似性。虽然她令人信服地争论了两者...