Love, lust and human suffering - passion in all its aspects - was Samuel Richardson's great theme. The essays in Passion and Virtue are thematically united by the moral vision in Richardson's novels. The novels reveal the conflicting demands of human...
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Love, lust and human suffering - passion in all its aspects - was Samuel Richardson's great theme. The essays in Passion and Virtue are thematically united by the moral vision in Richardson's novels. The novels reveal the conflicting demands of human passion, through the ennobling and destructive aspects of love and lust, and the attempt to achieve a virtuous existence through Christian suffering. This conflict is considered and critically analyzed in fourteen essays, all originally published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, the leading periodical for fiction from this period. Recently, Richardson's works have had a special acclaim, attracting more critical interest than those of any other eighteenth-century novelist. Encompassing a wide range of responses to the moral conflict portrayed at the heart of Richardson's novels, critical approaches in Passion and Virtue include the political, economic, psychological, philosophical, theological and biblical,. While his masterpiece, Clarissa, receives the most attention, both Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison are also examined, the latter only recently regaining critical favour. Each essay reflects the author's expertise and demonstrates the significant scholarship published in Eighteenth Century Fiction.
Frontmatter -- -- Contents -- -- Contributors -- -- Acknowledgments -- -- A Note on Texts -- -- Introduction -- -- Pamela -- -- Pamela's Textual Authority -- -- "Ciceronian Eloquence": The Politics of Virtue in Richardson's Pamela -- -- The Place of Sally Godfrey in Richardson's Pamela -- -- Enclosing the Immovable: Structuring Social Authority in Pamela 2 -- -- Clarissa -- -- Protean Lovelace -- -- Clarissa's Treasonable Correspondence: Gender, Epistolary Politics, and the Public Sphere -- -- Is Clarissa Bourgeois Art? -- -- Abuse and Atonement: The Passion of Clarissa Harlowe -- -- "Written in the Heart": Clarissa and Scripture -- -- The Gnostic Clarissa -- -- Sir Charles Grandison -- -- Sir Charles Grandison: Richardson on Body and Character -- -- "Sufficient to the Day": Anxiety in Sir Charles Grandison -- -- The Dialectic of Love in Sir Charles Grandison -- -- Sir Charles Grandison and the "Language of Nature" -- -- Index
