Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender

Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender PDF Author: Tassie Gwilliam
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804725225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In developing a new gender theory for analyzing Samuel Richardson's three major novels - Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison - the author argues that these novels of sexual threat expose, sometimes unwillingly, the extraordinary labor required to construct and maintain the eighteenth-century ideology of gender, that apparently natural dream of perfect symmetry between the sexes. The instability of that model is revealed notably in Richardson's fascination with cross-gender identification and other instances of transgressive desires. The author demonstrates that these violations of the supposedly unbreachable barriers between masculinity and femininity produce what is most moving and imaginative in Richardson's fiction and create an equally powerful repression in the form of punishment of transgressive characters and desires. She also illustrates, through a reading of recurrent fantasies about the composition of bodies - especially women's bodies - the complex interaction between those fantasies and the construction of masculinity and femininity. The genesis of Richardson's own writing is located in a dynamic, reciprocal idea of gender that allows him to see femininity from the inside while retaining the privileges of the masculine viewpoint; the relation between this origin and the novels themselves forms the basis for the discussions of the novels. Each of the three chapters in the book seeks to investigate particular turn of gender construction and a particular mode of the reiterative story of sexual differences. The first chapter, on Pamela, calls on eighteenth-century discourse about opposing ideologies of gender and sexuality to elucidate Richardson's project. The next chapter, on Clarissa, shifts to a more intricate analysis of fantasies about sex and gender, in particular the double reading of masculinity and femininity in the form of of masculinity reading itself through the feminine. The final chapter, on The History of Sir Charles Grandison, examines Richardson's attempt to solidify masculinity in the person of the "good man."

Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender

Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender PDF Author: Tassie Gwilliam
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804725225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In developing a new gender theory for analyzing Samuel Richardson's three major novels - Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison - the author argues that these novels of sexual threat expose, sometimes unwillingly, the extraordinary labor required to construct and maintain the eighteenth-century ideology of gender, that apparently natural dream of perfect symmetry between the sexes. The instability of that model is revealed notably in Richardson's fascination with cross-gender identification and other instances of transgressive desires. The author demonstrates that these violations of the supposedly unbreachable barriers between masculinity and femininity produce what is most moving and imaginative in Richardson's fiction and create an equally powerful repression in the form of punishment of transgressive characters and desires. She also illustrates, through a reading of recurrent fantasies about the composition of bodies - especially women's bodies - the complex interaction between those fantasies and the construction of masculinity and femininity. The genesis of Richardson's own writing is located in a dynamic, reciprocal idea of gender that allows him to see femininity from the inside while retaining the privileges of the masculine viewpoint; the relation between this origin and the novels themselves forms the basis for the discussions of the novels. Each of the three chapters in the book seeks to investigate particular turn of gender construction and a particular mode of the reiterative story of sexual differences. The first chapter, on Pamela, calls on eighteenth-century discourse about opposing ideologies of gender and sexuality to elucidate Richardson's project. The next chapter, on Clarissa, shifts to a more intricate analysis of fantasies about sex and gender, in particular the double reading of masculinity and femininity in the form of of masculinity reading itself through the feminine. The final chapter, on The History of Sir Charles Grandison, examines Richardson's attempt to solidify masculinity in the person of the "good man."

Gender and the Fictions of the Public Sphere, 1690-1755

Gender and the Fictions of the Public Sphere, 1690-1755 PDF Author: Anthony Pollock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135855900
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Challenging the longstanding interpretation of the early English public sphere as polite, inclusive, and egalitarian this book re-interprets key texts by representative male authors from the period—Addison, Steele, Shaftesbury, and Richardson—as reactionary responses to the widely-consumed and surprisingly subversive work of women writers such as Mary Astell, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood, whose political and journalistic texts have up until now received little scholarly consideration. By analyzing a wide range of materials produced between the 1690s to the 1750s, Pollock exposes a literary marketplace characterized less by cool rational discourse and genial consensus than by vehement contestation and struggles for cultural authority, particularly in debates concerning the proper extent of women’s participation in English public life. Utilizing innovative methods of research and analysis the book reveals that even at its moment of inception, there was an immanent critique of the early liberal public sphere being articulated by women writers who were keenly aware of the hierarchies and techniques of exclusion that contradicted their culture’s oft-repeated appeals to the principles of equality and universality.

Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded. [The Editor's Preface Signed: Thomas Archer.]

Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded. [The Editor's Preface Signed: Thomas Archer.] PDF Author: Samuel Richardson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description


Designing Women

Designing Women PDF Author: Tita Chico
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838756058
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
"Drawing on extensive archival research, Chico argues that the dressing room embodies contradictory connotations, linked to the eroticism and theatricality of the playhouse tiring-room as well as to the learning and privilege of the gentleman's closet.

The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel

The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel PDF Author: Leah Price
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521539395
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel, first published in 2000, brings together two traditionally antagonistic fields, book history and narrative theory, to challenge established theories of 'the rise of the novel'. Leah Price shows that far from leveling class or gender distinctions, as has long been claimed, the novel has consistently located them within its own audience. Shedding new light on Richardson and Radcliffe, Scott and George Eliot, this book asks why the epistolary novel disappeared, how the book review emerged, why eighteenth-century abridgers designed their books for women while Victorian publishers marketed them to men, and how editors' reproduction of old texts has shaped authors' production of new ones. This innovative study will change the way we think not just about the history of reading, but about the genealogy of the canon wars, the future of intellectual property, and the role that anthologies play in our own classrooms.

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews PDF Author: Henry Fielding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
A burlesque of Richardson's "Pamela", which was generally ascribed to Fielding at the time of its appearance and held by most authorities to be by him.--Cf. W.L. Cross' "The history of Henry Fielding", v. 1, p. 23, 303-308: Notes & queries, 12th ser. v. 1, p. 24-26.

Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the Eighteenth-Century Reader

Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the Eighteenth-Century Reader PDF Author: Tom Keymer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521604406
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Whilst drawing to some extent on recent theoretical studies, this book restores Clarissa to its largely neglected eighteenth-century context.

Clarissa Harlowe or the History of a Young Lady (Complete)

Clarissa Harlowe or the History of a Young Lady (Complete) PDF Author: Samuel Richardson
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 146552875X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 3922

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Book Description


A Maggot

A Maggot PDF Author: John Fowles
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316254983
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In the spring of 1736 four men and one woman, all traveling under assumed names, are crossing the Devonshire countryside en route to a mysterious rendezvous. Before their journey ends, one of them will be hanged, one will vanish, and the others will face a murder trial. Out of the truths and lies that envelop these events, John Fowles has created a novel that is at once a tale of erotic obsession, an exploration of the conflict between reason and superstition, an astonishing act of literary legerdemain, and the story of the birth of a new faith.

Anti-Pamela and Shamela

Anti-Pamela and Shamela PDF Author: Eliza Haywood
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770480714
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most important responses to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela. Anti-Pamela comments on Richardson’s representations of work, virtue, and gender, while also questioning the generic expectations of the novel that Pamela establishes, and it provides a vivid portrayal of the material realities of life for a woman in eighteenth-century London. Fielding’s Shamela punctures both the figure Richardson established for himself as an author and Pamela’s preoccupation with virtue. This Broadview edition also includes a rich selection of historical materials, including writings from the period on sexuality, women’s work, Pamela and the print trade, and education and conduct.