Suzy Anger investigates the relationship of Victorian interpretation to the ways in which literary criticism is practiced today. Her primary focus is literary interpretation, but she also considers fields such as legal theory, psychology, history, and the natural sciences in order to establish the pervasiveness of hermeneutic thought in Victorian culture. Anger's book demonstrates that much current thought on interpretation has its antecedents in the Victorians, who were already deeply engaged with the problems of interpretation that concern literary theorists today.

AcknowledgmentsAn Overview1. Victorian Scriptural Hermeneutics: History, Intention, and EvolutionIntertext I: Victorian Legal Interpretation2. Carlyle: Between Biblical Exegesis and Romantic HermeneuticsIntertext 2: Victorian Science and Hermeneutics: The Interpretation of Nature3. George Eliot's Hermeneutics of SympathyIntertext 3: Victorian Literary Criticism4. Subjectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Intention: Oscar Wilde and Literary HermeneuticsEpilogueNotesIndex