A Plenitude of Prefixes: Delineating the Boundaries of Neo-, Retro-, Faux- and Post-Victorian Literature

Abstract

The category of contemporary fiction looking back to nineteenth-century British history is adorned with various prefixes, among them neo-Victorian, retro-Victorian, faux-Victorian and post-Victorian. The problem of naming is a common one when attempts are made to describe and define a new phenomenon. After about a decade of debate, the prefix ‛neo’ is the one chosen most often. Nevertheless, it is quite often used interchangeably with the others. Evidently then the boundaries between these terms are at best blurry. In fact they are often treated as synonyms, even though the scope of the concepts to which they are applied often differs. It seems, however, that all these terms could be put to good use if their individual definitions were specified and agreed upon. I would therefore like to postulate a disambiguation of the four terms mentioned above.