Michael Weber
Timelines in Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Library of Congress.
The cover shows a reverse woodblock print by Vanessa Bell,
which was used as the cover illustration for C. P. Sanger’s 1926 essay
The Structure of Wuthering Heights published by The Hogarth Press.
© Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta Garnett
The German First Edition was published in 2017 under the title
“Die Chronologie von Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights”
as Vol. 2 of this same series.
Edited and translated into English by Catherine Campbell.
ISSN 0935-4093
ISBN 978-3-631-80555-8 (Print) ∙ E-ISBN 978-3-631-82435-1 (E-Book)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-82436-8 (EPUB) ∙ E-ISBN 978-3-631-82437-5 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b17084
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2020
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙
Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
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This publication has been peer reviewed.
About the author
Michael Weber was a professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Freiburg, Germany. As a scientist, he is fascinated by the temporal structure of Wuthering Heights and has extensively explored literary paradoxes in medicine and literature.
About the book
The temporal structure of Wuthering Heights has long been regarded as opaque or even flawed. This is explained by the fact that the years 1778, 1801 and 1802 do not entirely cohere with the numerous relative time references in the novel if, as scholarship contends, the years 1801 and 1802 refer to Ellen Dean’s narration of the story. By means of mathematically precise calculations and a grammatical analysis of the text, this critical new approach argues that the time frame of Wuthering Heights is sound if the years 1801 and 1802 date the writing of Mr. Lockwood’s diary. The crucial differentiation between the recording of Mr. Lockwood’s diary and the narration of Ellen Dean’s story leads to a deeper understanding of the intentions of the two narrators and the behaviour of the protagonists.
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
‘T was on a summer’s day – the sixth of June: –
I like to be particular in dates,
Not only of the age, and year, but moon;
They are sort of post-house, where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto I, 103
Table of Contents
I. Questions and Contradictions
II. The Temporal Structure of the Novel
The Report and the Story – Formal and Functional Narrative Aspects
The Time Scheme of Mr. Lockwood’s Report
Mr. Lockwood the contemporary witness
The Time Scheme of Ellen Dean’s Story
Time references based on textual content (internal evidence)
Time references based on numerical data (external evidence)
Time references based on misleading ages
The misleading ages – background and consequences
The Time Scheme of Wuthering Heights
The Report and the Story – Temporal and Chronological Aspects
III. The Chronologies
The Definitive Chronology
The Traditional Chronologies
Sanger’s