Houliang Chen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3947612 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Houliang Chen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Houliang |
| FAMILY NAME | Chen |
| SIGNATURE | CHEN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Huazhong University of Science and Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4535-9899 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Reimagining the “Redundant Woman”
In January 1856, George Eliot published an essay entitled “German Wit: Heinrich Heine” in The Westminster Review, in which she drew an analogy between the early stages of human civilization and the
Earnest Hypocrisy
This essay examines William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847–48) through the lens of nineteenth-century Anglican Evangelicalism, arguing that Thackeray’s portrayal of Pitt Crawley (Junior) crystallizes the paradoxes of Evangelical reform culture in early Victorian Britain. Building on the critical foundations laid by Elisabeth Jay, Mark Knight, and Catherine Hall, the study situates Pitt within the historical context of Evangelical social …
"I Always Protest Against Being Referred to the Bees"
In Bleak House (1852–1853) and Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865), Charles Dickens draws analogies between human beings and bees, which function as an important means to address social and moral problems of Victorian society. This article shows how references to bees expose the hedonistic version of psychological egoism represented by Skimpole's drone philosophy in Bleak House and how Dickens attacks the evils of insatiable greed underlying the ideolo…
To Buy Him a Pair of Gloves”
[T]o Dress So as to Call Forth No Remark at All”
The Ethics of Criticism and the (Re)justification of Literary Studies
Home Visiting, Domestic Observation, and the Middle-Class Gaze in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son
Gender politics and Victorian literary representation of the body
This paper analyses the nineteenth-century discourse around the human body. It examines two corpora: Charles Dickens’s works and contemporary writings. In both contexts, the body is observed through a detailed focus on its individual parts. This study employs a corpus-driven approach to investigate the vocabulary used to describe the body in these two corpora, providing complementary explanations to traditional close reading methods. The findings…
Contours of Status and Power
The Victorians were notorious for their preoccupation with the posture and carriage of men and women, by which they outlined the contours of their refinement and moral characters. Drawing on Victorian etiquette manuals and modern social psychological studies regarding sitting postures, this article addresses scenes and melodramas featuring seats in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend so as to reveal how Dickens has created a scathing satire on th…
Distressing sons, anxious fathers and worries about the empire in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son
‘Common people to talk of Mr. Dombey and his domestic affairs!’
Developed from scholarship in recent decades that highlights the positive potential of gossip as a kind of discursive practice, this article addresses the politics of gossip represented by Charles Dickens in Dombey and Son. It examines how gossip is used as a plot device to insinuate the deepening crisis of the Dombey world, as well as how the devoiced subordinate people employ it as a discursive strategy to survive and negotiate with the supervi…
I Know Well and Appreciate the Repose and Delight to Be Found in Gardening”
Drawing upon Michael Waters's and Sarah Bilston's studies of Victorian literary representations of gardens, this article delves into scenes, activities, and imagery related to gardens and gardening in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son. Examining these "garden elements" in the novel, it explores how seemingly apolitical garden scenes and gardening activities were embedded in Victorian schemas of gender and class configuration. Specifically, it anal…
An Index of Gentility”
Enlightened by scholarships in recent decades about the cultural significance of women’s embroidery, this article attends to the scenes and activities featuring needlework in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son. Through his representations of the nineteenth-century needlework language in this novel, Dickens provides for readers a window into Victorian women’s everyday performance of embroidery. By focusing on his representations of needlework in the…
Victory in Ethics
[E]xpressly Meant to Promote the Formation of the Domestic Virtues”
Building on recent scholarship about the cultural significance of material life in the nineteenth century, this article attends to Charles Dickens's representation of domestic interiors and household furnishings in Our Mutual Friend, and reflects on the agency of material objects in shaping Victorians' moral life. A close examination of the variations in different characters' furnishings and their morally destructive or constructive consequences …
To have no work to do [is] strange”
to 6 p.m., punctuated by a two-hour lunch-break, from Monday to Saturday" (Citation2015, 16).2 Jenny Dyer details that "[in the early nineteenth century] the tax on male servants was justified as a tax on extravagance and intended to target liveried servants for whom, when the tax was first imposed, one guinea was to be paid each year," while "the tax on female servants was levied at a lower rate starting at 2s 6d" (Citation2019, 631).3 Strictly …
“Men separate from women and domesticity”
Passing the “Three Doors of Liberation”
To fully understand Oxherding Tale, which is praised by Rudolph Byrd as “perhaps the most widely taught and admired of Johnson’s novels” (549), a Buddhist perspective is both helpful and necessary
Seeking an Enlightened perception of being
No prominent works on this page.
Seeking an Enlightened perception of being
“Men separate from women and domesticity”
Passing the “Three Doors of Liberation”
To fully understand Oxherding Tale, which is praised by Rudolph Byrd as “perhaps the most widely taught and admired of Johnson’s novels” (549), a Buddhist perspective is both helpful and necessary
An Index of Gentility”
Enlightened by scholarships in recent decades about the cultural significance of women’s embroidery, this article attends to the scenes and activities featuring needlework in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son. Through his representations of the nineteenth-century needlework language in this novel, Dickens provides for readers a window into Victorian women’s everyday performance of embroidery. By focusing on his representations of needlework in the…
Victory in Ethics
[E]xpressly Meant to Promote the Formation of the Domestic Virtues”
Building on recent scholarship about the cultural significance of material life in the nineteenth century, this article attends to Charles Dickens's representation of domestic interiors and household furnishings in Our Mutual Friend, and reflects on the agency of material objects in shaping Victorians' moral life. A close examination of the variations in different characters' furnishings and their morally destructive or constructive consequences …
To have no work to do [is] strange”
to 6 p.m., punctuated by a two-hour lunch-break, from Monday to Saturday" (Citation2015, 16).2 Jenny Dyer details that "[in the early nineteenth century] the tax on male servants was justified as a tax on extravagance and intended to target liveried servants for whom, when the tax was first imposed, one guinea was to be paid each year," while "the tax on female servants was levied at a lower rate starting at 2s 6d" (Citation2019, 631).3 Strictly …
Gender politics and Victorian literary representation of the body
This paper analyses the nineteenth-century discourse around the human body. It examines two corpora: Charles Dickens’s works and contemporary writings. In both contexts, the body is observed through a detailed focus on its individual parts. This study employs a corpus-driven approach to investigate the vocabulary used to describe the body in these two corpora, providing complementary explanations to traditional close reading methods. The findings…
Contours of Status and Power
The Victorians were notorious for their preoccupation with the posture and carriage of men and women, by which they outlined the contours of their refinement and moral characters. Drawing on Victorian etiquette manuals and modern social psychological studies regarding sitting postures, this article addresses scenes and melodramas featuring seats in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend so as to reveal how Dickens has created a scathing satire on th…
Distressing sons, anxious fathers and worries about the empire in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son
‘Common people to talk of Mr. Dombey and his domestic affairs!’
Developed from scholarship in recent decades that highlights the positive potential of gossip as a kind of discursive practice, this article addresses the politics of gossip represented by Charles Dickens in Dombey and Son. It examines how gossip is used as a plot device to insinuate the deepening crisis of the Dombey world, as well as how the devoiced subordinate people employ it as a discursive strategy to survive and negotiate with the supervi…
I Know Well and Appreciate the Repose and Delight to Be Found in Gardening”
Drawing upon Michael Waters's and Sarah Bilston's studies of Victorian literary representations of gardens, this article delves into scenes, activities, and imagery related to gardens and gardening in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son. Examining these "garden elements" in the novel, it explores how seemingly apolitical garden scenes and gardening activities were embedded in Victorian schemas of gender and class configuration. Specifically, it anal…
"I Always Protest Against Being Referred to the Bees"
In Bleak House (1852–1853) and Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865), Charles Dickens draws analogies between human beings and bees, which function as an important means to address social and moral problems of Victorian society. This article shows how references to bees expose the hedonistic version of psychological egoism represented by Skimpole's drone philosophy in Bleak House and how Dickens attacks the evils of insatiable greed underlying the ideolo…
To Buy Him a Pair of Gloves”
[T]o Dress So as to Call Forth No Remark at All”
The Ethics of Criticism and the (Re)justification of Literary Studies
Home Visiting, Domestic Observation, and the Middle-Class Gaze in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son
Reimagining the “Redundant Woman”
In January 1856, George Eliot published an essay entitled “German Wit: Heinrich Heine” in The Westminster Review, in which she drew an analogy between the early stages of human civilization and the
Earnest Hypocrisy
This essay examines William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847–48) through the lens of nineteenth-century Anglican Evangelicalism, arguing that Thackeray’s portrayal of Pitt Crawley (Junior) crystallizes the paradoxes of Evangelical reform culture in early Victorian Britain. Building on the critical foundations laid by Elisabeth Jay, Mark Knight, and Catherine Hall, the study situates Pitt within the historical context of Evangelical social …
Art (12 works) · History (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices (5 works)