מפרסומי הסגל: Ilana Blumberg, Victorian Sacrifice

ספרה של ד"ר אילנה בלומברג, Victorian Sacrifice: Ethics and Economics in Mid-Century Novels, עוסק במתח המתקיים בתקופה הוויקטוריאנית בין תפיסות דתיות של הקרבה עצמית לבין האתוס הקפיטליסטי, ובהשתקפותו של מתח זה בספרות התקופה. כפי שנכתב באתר ההוצאה לאור (Ohio State University Press):

In Victorian Sacrifice: Ethics and Economics in Mid-Century Novels (Ohio State University Press, 2013), Ilana M. Blumberg offers a major reconsideration of the central Victorian ethic of self-sacrifice, suggesting that much of what we have taken to be the moral psychology of Victorian fiction may be understood in terms of the dramatic confrontation between Christian theology and the world of modern economic theory. As Victorian writers Charlotte Mary Yonge, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Augusta Ward strove to forge a practicable ethics that would reconcile the influences of an evangelical Christianity and its emphasis on selfless charity with the forces of laissez-faire capitalism and its emphasis on individual profit, they moved away from the cherished ideal of painful, solitary self-sacrifice in service of another’s good. Instead, Blumberg suggests, major novelists sought an ethical realism characterized by the belief that virtuous action could serve the collective benefit of the parties involved.