Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Disraeli and the Politics of Fiction
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2022) 7-33
Keywords:
Disraeli, Benjamin,
;
Disraeli, Benjamin, Correspondence
;
Jewish statesmen
;
Jewish authors
;
Letters
;
Autobiography
;
English fiction History and criticism
Abstract:
A brief consideration of the innate characteristics of personal letters, especially the direct and projected relationship between writer and recipient, defines the ways in which letters are directly and imaginatively autobiographical. By creating for the reader the effects of documentary immediacy and voyeuristic gratification, letters become the purest form of autobiography, one without the mediation of memory. The following analysis of Disraeli’s actual letters to his family and his political associates reveals not just the implications of their factual content, but also the imbedded fantasies shaping his ambitions. The relation of the letters to Disraeli’s other writings (novels, memoranda, journalism, biography, and speeches) is then explored, revealing a congruency between the political career and the fiction, as, for example, in the ways his conservative ideas in the 1830s shape the ideological basis of the Young England trilogy in the 1840s. Discussion of later letters, from the years of Disraeli’s political success, shows how powerfully his determination to cast his life as a romance shapes his relationship with Queen Victoria and the policies of his Governments, as well as his final novel, Endymion.
DOI:
10.1163/9789004505674_003
URL:
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