Putting the ‘Neo’ Back into Neo-Victorian:

The Neo-Victorian Novel as Postmodern Revisionist Fiction

Abstract

This article discusses the tendency in recent Neo-Victorian Studies to privilege the influence of the nineteenth century on the neo-Victorian novel at the expense of postmodern or contemporary influences. I explore how such favouritism towards the nineteenth century has produced the pathological framing of neo-Victorian fictional practices as nostalgic, fetishistic and derivative of Victorian fiction, giving the Victorian ‘original’ precedence over the contemporary neo-Victorian ‘copy’. I investigate assertions of the neo-Victorian novel’s failure to fulfil postmodern benchmarks, and consider whether this move contributes to a general assertion of postmodernism’s dwindling relevance or whether it augurs a neo-conservative shift away from literary fiction’s subversive potential. Finally, I proffer the neo-Victorian novel’s contribution to recognitive justice as the postmodern revisionist criterion most likely to ensure the fledgling genre’s significance to future generations, as well as to politically marginalised groups in the present.