Publisher:
University Press of Kentucky, Lexington
Twentieth-century historians of the early novel, most prominently Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Terry Castle, have canonized fictions that portray the individual in sustained tension with the social environment. Such fictions privilege a strongly...
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Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt / Zentrale
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Twentieth-century historians of the early novel, most prominently Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Terry Castle, have canonized fictions that portray the individual in sustained tension with the social environment. Such fictions privilege a strongly linear structure. Recent reexaminations of the canon, however, have revealed a number of early novels that do not fit this mold. In The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740-1775, Betty Schellenberg identifies another kind of plot, one that focuses on the social group - the "conversational circle"--As a model that can affirm traditional values but just as often promotes an alternative sense of community. Schellenberg offers a model for exploring a range of novels that experiment with narrative patterns
Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-160) and index
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Electronic reproduction
Introduction: Narrating Sociability in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England -- 1. Consensus, the Conversational Circle, and Mid-Eighteenth-Century Fiction -- 2. Constructing the Circle in Sarah Fielding's David Simple -- 3. Social Authority and the Domestic Circle in Samuel Richardson's Pamela Part II -- 4. Socializing Desire and Radiating the Exemplary in Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison -- 5. Silencing the Center in Henry Fielding's Amelia -- 6. Authorizing the Marginalized Circle in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall -- 7. Mobilizing the Community, Immobilizing the Ideal in Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker -- 8. Disembodying the Social Circle in Sarah Fielding's Volume the Last -- Conclusion: A Failed Plot? The Fate of the Conversational Circle in English Fiction.
