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Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 By Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 by Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)

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Summary

This study argues that the epistolary novel, the principal form of narrative in the 18th century, was eventually suppressed in favour of more authoritarian, third-person models designed to underwrite a new version of British national identity in the Napoleonic period.

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 Summary

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions by Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)

Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? Why was it that by 1825 the principal narrative form of eighteenth-century fiction has been replaced by the third-person and often historicised models which have predominated ever since? Nicola Watson's original and wide-ranging study charts the suppression of epistolary fiction, exploring the attempted radicalization of the genre by Wollstonecraft and other feminists in the 1790s, its rejection and parody by Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, the increasingly discredited role played by letters in the historical novels of Jane Porter and Walter Scott, and their troubling, ghostly presence in the Gothic narratives of James Hogg and Charles Maturin. The shift in narrative method is seen as a response to anxieties about the French Revolution, with the epistolary, feminized, and sentimental plot replaced by a more authoritarian third-person mode as part of a wider redrawing of the relation between the individual and the social consensus. This is a brilliant and innovative reading of the place of the novel in the reformulation of British national identity in the Napoleonic period, throwing new light on writers as diverse as Hazlitt, Charlotte Smith, Walter Scott, Helen Maria Williams, and Byron.

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 Reviews

`the book is well worth persevering with: fascinating, often elegantly written. Literary Review
`fascinating ... elegantly written' Literary Review
'the book is well worth persevering with: fascinating, often elegantly written' Literary Review, February 1994
'In this wide-ranging study, Watson is more interested - and, certainly, convincing and lucid - in demonstrating the way the errant letter evolves, all the while "retaining something of its scandalously sexualized nature".' Eleanor Ty, Wilfrid Laurier University, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7:1
Revolution and the Form of the British Novel is faithful to its historical period. In particular, there are helpful thumbnail sketches of the altering political scene as well as useful expansions on networks of literary friendship or influence. Harriette Wilson...serves to remind us how far literary studies are widened by books as elegantly written as Revolution and the Form of the British Novel. * The Byron Journal *
Densely argued, clever in its interpretaton of texts - autobigraphical, biographical as well as novelistic - and displaying considerable sophistication in the deployment of contemporary narrative terminology. * History of European Ideas *

Additional information

NPB9780198112976
9780198112976
0198112971
Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions by Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)
Nicola J. Watson (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northwestern University, USA)
New
Hardback
Oxford University Press
1994-02-03
230
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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