The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel
The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Author: J. A. Downie

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0191651079

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although the emergence of the English novel is generally regarded as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, this is the first book to be published professing to cover the 'eighteenth-century English novel' in its entirety. This Handbook surveys the development of the English novel during the 'long' eighteenth century-in other words, from the later seventeenth century right through to the first three decades of the nineteenth century when, with the publication of the novels of Jane Austen and Walter Scott, 'the novel' finally gained critical acceptance and assumed the position of cultural hegemony it enjoyed for over a century. By situating the novels of the period which are still read today against the background of the hundreds published between 1660 and 1830, this Handbook not only covers those 'masters and mistresses' of early prose fiction-such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Scott and Austen-who are still acknowledged to be seminal figures in the emergence and development of the English novel, but also the significant number of recently-rediscovered novelists who were popular in their own day. At the same time, its comprehensive coverage of cultural contexts not considered by any existing study, but which are central to the emergence of the novel, such as the book trade and the mechanics of book production, copyright and censorship, the growth of the reading public, the economics of culture both in London and in the provinces, and the re-printing of popular fiction after 1774, offers unique insight into the making of the English novel.

Sacred Engagements
Sacred Engagements

Author: Alison Conway

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2023-02-14

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 142144514X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The marriage plot is a ubiquitous theme across the history of the novel, beginning from the earliest examples of long-form prose published in the eighteenth century. What Sacred Engagements brings to this well-trodden area of literary studies is a unique feminist perspective on the relationship between fiction and interfaith marriage during a moment of broader cultural discourse about religious tolerance in England. Conway reads quite broadly for the marriage plot, including among her readings novels by Samuel Richardson, Frances Brooke, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Maria Edgeworth in which minor characters marry outside of their own religious institution, or the novel's hero and heroine have a failed courtship and do not marry by the novel's end. Her intervention at the nexus of literature and religion is also unique; existing studies in this subfield often focus on a particular religious sect and literary representations of it, whereas Conway reads for relationships forged across religious boundaries. While a political history of England in this period reveals a partial picture of how tolerance came to be during the Enlightenment, Conway's study of the novel shows a more nuanced story about the challenges of peaceful coexistence through its representations of interfaith marriage. By foregrounding women's right to liberty of conscience, interfaith marriage counters the privatization of religious affect and the naturalization of women's subordination in marriage. The interfaith marriage plot invites us to review the terms governing our narratives of marriage and community, and the ethics of sociability that sustain them, both in relation to the history of the novel and to our contemporary moment"--