Access Type
Open Access Dissertation
Date of Award
1-1-1998
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. John R. Reed
Abstract
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, received today as a prolific but minor author of the early and middle Victorian periods, was an accomplished politician and orator and acknowledged so by his contemporaries. The context and content of Bulwer's work in Parliament and in the Cabinet provide insight not only into Bulwer himself, a literary person who was, in his day, politically prominent, but as well into the role that a person of letters might play in the Victorian House of Conunons. Through a variety of approaches, conceptual, analytical, biographical, argumentational and rhetorical, this study reveals Bulwer's grasp of events and policy and his ability to interpret them politically, economically, militarily and socially in the course of complex, but well-received delivery in Parliament. It also examines the historical, social and cultural contexts of Bulwer's labors in Parliament, because it is not possible to understand such a writer-politician apart from the age in which he was so fully located.
Recommended Citation
Caldwell, Richard Russell, "A person of letters in Parliament : Edward Bulwer-Lytton's career as a member of the House of Commons and a minister of government 1831-1866" (1998). Wayne State University Dissertations. 1210.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/1210