Author: Henry Fielding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations - 77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767. The collection illuminates Henry Fielding's activities as author, lawyer, and magistrate; and it is valuable as well for the light it throws on his character and personal relationships. Fielding scholars are already acquainted with the important letters to his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to his rival Samuel Richardson, to his friend George Lyttelton, and to his famous half-brother John Fielding, the latter written on the sad occasion of his final voyage to Lisbon. In this volume they will also find Fielding's correspondence with his great patron, the Duke of Bedford, and his agents - letters relating to Fielding's stewardship of the New Forest and to his appointments to the magistracy. The heart of this present collection, however - Fielding's correspondence with his closest friend, James Hermes' Harris - is completely new. Never before published, the Harris letters comprise the finest extant examples of Fielding's epistolary correspondence, a kind of familiar writing he practised reluctantly, but well. The Harris papers are equally valuable for what they reveal of Sarah Fielding's literary and scholarly interests and her relationship with her brother. Other letters in the collection - several also published here for the first time - will serve to clarify her friendships with Richardson, Garrick, and Elizabeth Montagu. Included in the Appendix are a half-dozen letters from members of the family that will be of interest to biographers of Henry and Sarah.Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations--77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767.
The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding
Author: Henry Fielding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations - 77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767. The collection illuminates Henry Fielding's activities as author, lawyer, and magistrate; and it is valuable as well for the light it throws on his character and personal relationships. Fielding scholars are already acquainted with the important letters to his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to his rival Samuel Richardson, to his friend George Lyttelton, and to his famous half-brother John Fielding, the latter written on the sad occasion of his final voyage to Lisbon. In this volume they will also find Fielding's correspondence with his great patron, the Duke of Bedford, and his agents - letters relating to Fielding's stewardship of the New Forest and to his appointments to the magistracy. The heart of this present collection, however - Fielding's correspondence with his closest friend, James Hermes' Harris - is completely new. Never before published, the Harris letters comprise the finest extant examples of Fielding's epistolary correspondence, a kind of familiar writing he practised reluctantly, but well. The Harris papers are equally valuable for what they reveal of Sarah Fielding's literary and scholarly interests and her relationship with her brother. Other letters in the collection - several also published here for the first time - will serve to clarify her friendships with Richardson, Garrick, and Elizabeth Montagu. Included in the Appendix are a half-dozen letters from members of the family that will be of interest to biographers of Henry and Sarah.Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations--77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations - 77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767. The collection illuminates Henry Fielding's activities as author, lawyer, and magistrate; and it is valuable as well for the light it throws on his character and personal relationships. Fielding scholars are already acquainted with the important letters to his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to his rival Samuel Richardson, to his friend George Lyttelton, and to his famous half-brother John Fielding, the latter written on the sad occasion of his final voyage to Lisbon. In this volume they will also find Fielding's correspondence with his great patron, the Duke of Bedford, and his agents - letters relating to Fielding's stewardship of the New Forest and to his appointments to the magistracy. The heart of this present collection, however - Fielding's correspondence with his closest friend, James Hermes' Harris - is completely new. Never before published, the Harris letters comprise the finest extant examples of Fielding's epistolary correspondence, a kind of familiar writing he practised reluctantly, but well. The Harris papers are equally valuable for what they reveal of Sarah Fielding's literary and scholarly interests and her relationship with her brother. Other letters in the collection - several also published here for the first time - will serve to clarify her friendships with Richardson, Garrick, and Elizabeth Montagu. Included in the Appendix are a half-dozen letters from members of the family that will be of interest to biographers of Henry and Sarah.Important discoveries in private and public archives have recently brought to light many new letters by Henry Fielding (1707-54) and by his sister, the novelist and classicist Sarah Fielding (1710-68). Published here for the first time is their entire extant correspondence, edited with an Introduction and explanatory annotations--77 letters from and to Henry Fielding written over the years 1727 to 1754, and 33 letters from and to Sarah Fielding written from 1749 to 1767.
The History of the Countess of Dellwyn, by Sarah Fielding
Author: Gillian Skinner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351003402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
Sarah Fielding was one of the most respected women authors of her generation and a key figure in the development of the novel. She was admired especially by Samuel Richardson, who famously commented that her ‘knowledge of the human heart’ was greater than that of her brother, the novelist Henry Fielding. This edition revives The Countess of Dellwyn, the only one of Sarah Fielding’s major works not previously available in a modern scholarly edition. The novel is satirical and didactic, taking as its targets fashionable life and modern marriage (and scandalous divorce) and narrated with acerbic wit by its anonymous third-person narrator. This edition benefits greatly from Gillian Skinner’s editorial work and it is a book that will be of great interest to researchers into the eighteenth-century novel and women’s writing of the period worldwide.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351003402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
Sarah Fielding was one of the most respected women authors of her generation and a key figure in the development of the novel. She was admired especially by Samuel Richardson, who famously commented that her ‘knowledge of the human heart’ was greater than that of her brother, the novelist Henry Fielding. This edition revives The Countess of Dellwyn, the only one of Sarah Fielding’s major works not previously available in a modern scholarly edition. The novel is satirical and didactic, taking as its targets fashionable life and modern marriage (and scandalous divorce) and narrated with acerbic wit by its anonymous third-person narrator. This edition benefits greatly from Gillian Skinner’s editorial work and it is a book that will be of great interest to researchers into the eighteenth-century novel and women’s writing of the period worldwide.
The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last
Author: Sarah Fielding
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813148251
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 442
Book Description
The Adventures of David Simple (1744), Sarah Fielding's first and most celebrated novel, went through several editions, the second of which was heavily revised by her brother Henry. This edition includes Henry's "corrections" in an appendix. In recounting the guileless hero's search for a true friend, the novel depicts the derision with which almost everyone treats his sentimental attitudes to human nature. Acclaimed as an accurate portrait of mid-eighteenth-century London, The Adventures of David Simple sets forth some provocative feminist ideas. Also included is Fielding's much darker sequel, Volume the Last (1753).
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813148251
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 442
Book Description
The Adventures of David Simple (1744), Sarah Fielding's first and most celebrated novel, went through several editions, the second of which was heavily revised by her brother Henry. This edition includes Henry's "corrections" in an appendix. In recounting the guileless hero's search for a true friend, the novel depicts the derision with which almost everyone treats his sentimental attitudes to human nature. Acclaimed as an accurate portrait of mid-eighteenth-century London, The Adventures of David Simple sets forth some provocative feminist ideas. Also included is Fielding's much darker sequel, Volume the Last (1753).
Samuel Richardson and the Art of Letter-Writing
Author: Louise Curran
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316495523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This fascinating study examines Samuel Richardson's letters as important works of authorial self-fashioning. It analyses the development of his epistolary style; the links between his own letter-writing practice and that of his fictional protagonists; how his correspondence is highly conscious of the spectrum of publicity; and how he constructed his letter collections to form an epistolary archive for posterity. Looking backwards to earlier epistolary traditions, and forwards, to the emergence of the lives-in-letters mode of biography, the book places Richardson's correspondence in a historical continuum. It explores how the eighteenth century witnesses a transition, from a period in which an author would rarely preserve personal papers to a society in which the personal lives of writers become privileged as markers of authenticity in the expanded print market. It argues that Richardson's letters are shaped by this shifting relationship between correspondence and publicity in the mid-eighteenth century.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316495523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This fascinating study examines Samuel Richardson's letters as important works of authorial self-fashioning. It analyses the development of his epistolary style; the links between his own letter-writing practice and that of his fictional protagonists; how his correspondence is highly conscious of the spectrum of publicity; and how he constructed his letter collections to form an epistolary archive for posterity. Looking backwards to earlier epistolary traditions, and forwards, to the emergence of the lives-in-letters mode of biography, the book places Richardson's correspondence in a historical continuum. It explores how the eighteenth century witnesses a transition, from a period in which an author would rarely preserve personal papers to a society in which the personal lives of writers become privileged as markers of authenticity in the expanded print market. It argues that Richardson's letters are shaped by this shifting relationship between correspondence and publicity in the mid-eighteenth century.
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
Author: Jane Collier
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 9781551110967
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
Perhaps the first extended non-fiction prose satire written by an English woman, Jane Collier’s An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753) is a wickedly satirical send-up of eighteenth-century advice manuals and educational tracts. It takes the form of a mock advice manual in which the speaker instructs her readers in the arts of tormenting, offering advice on how to torment servants, humble companions and spouses, and on how to bring one’s children up to be a torment to others. The work’s satirical style, which focuses on the different kinds of power that individuals exercise over one another, follows in the footsteps of Jonathan Swift and paves the way for Jane Austen. This Broadview edition uses the first edition, the only edition published during the author’s lifetime. The appendices include excerpts from texts that influenced the essay (by Sarah Fielding, Jonathan Swift, Francis Coventry); excerpts from later texts that were influenced by it (by Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney, Jane Austen); and relevant writings on education and conduct (by John Locke, George Savile, Dr. John Gregory).
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 9781551110967
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
Perhaps the first extended non-fiction prose satire written by an English woman, Jane Collier’s An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753) is a wickedly satirical send-up of eighteenth-century advice manuals and educational tracts. It takes the form of a mock advice manual in which the speaker instructs her readers in the arts of tormenting, offering advice on how to torment servants, humble companions and spouses, and on how to bring one’s children up to be a torment to others. The work’s satirical style, which focuses on the different kinds of power that individuals exercise over one another, follows in the footsteps of Jonathan Swift and paves the way for Jane Austen. This Broadview edition uses the first edition, the only edition published during the author’s lifetime. The appendices include excerpts from texts that influenced the essay (by Sarah Fielding, Jonathan Swift, Francis Coventry); excerpts from later texts that were influenced by it (by Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney, Jane Austen); and relevant writings on education and conduct (by John Locke, George Savile, Dr. John Gregory).
A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Enlightenment
Author: Elizabeth Kraft
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350187720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This volume highlights the variety of forms comedy took in England, with reference to developments in Europe, particularly France, during the European Enlightenment. It argues that comedy in this period is characterized by wit, satire, and humor, provoking both laughter and sympathetic tears. Comic expression in the Enlightenment reflects continuities and engagements with the comedy of previous eras; it is also noted for new forms and preoccupations engendered by the cultural, philosophical, and political concerns of the time, including democratizing revolutions, increasing secularization, and growing emphasis on individualism. Discussions emphasize the period's stage comedy and acknowledge comic expression in various forms of print media including the emerging literary form we now know as the novel. Contributions from scholars reflect a wide variety of interests in the field of 18th-century studies, and the inclusion of a generous number of illustrations throughout demonstrates that the period's visual culture was also an important part of the Enlightenment comic landscape. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter and ethics. These eight different approaches to Enlightenment comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350187720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This volume highlights the variety of forms comedy took in England, with reference to developments in Europe, particularly France, during the European Enlightenment. It argues that comedy in this period is characterized by wit, satire, and humor, provoking both laughter and sympathetic tears. Comic expression in the Enlightenment reflects continuities and engagements with the comedy of previous eras; it is also noted for new forms and preoccupations engendered by the cultural, philosophical, and political concerns of the time, including democratizing revolutions, increasing secularization, and growing emphasis on individualism. Discussions emphasize the period's stage comedy and acknowledge comic expression in various forms of print media including the emerging literary form we now know as the novel. Contributions from scholars reflect a wide variety of interests in the field of 18th-century studies, and the inclusion of a generous number of illustrations throughout demonstrates that the period's visual culture was also an important part of the Enlightenment comic landscape. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter and ethics. These eight different approaches to Enlightenment comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.
The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830
Author: Thomas Keymer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 542
Book Description
This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 542
Book Description
This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.
Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young
Author: Mary Hilton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351872141
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Researchers have neglected the cultural history of education and as a result women's educational works have been disparaged as narrowly didactic and redundant to the history of ideas. Mary Hilton's book serves as a corrective to these biases by culturally contextualising the popular educational writings of leading women moralists and activists including Sarah Fielding, Hester Mulso Chapone, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Sarah Trimmer, Catharine Cappe, Priscilla Wakefield, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Marcet, Elizabeth Hamilton, Mary Carpenter, and Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow. Over a hundred-year period, from the rise of print culture in the mid-eighteenth century to the advent of the kindergarten movement in Britain in the mid-nineteenth, a variety of women intellectuals, from strikingly different ideological and theological milieux, supported, embellished, critiqued, and challenged contemporary public doctrines by positioning themselves as educators of the nation's young citizens. Of particular interest are their varying constructions of childhood expressed in a wide variety of published texts, including tales, treatises, explanatory handbooks, and collections of letters. By explicitly and consistently connecting the worlds of the schoolroom, the family, and the local parish to wider social, religious, scientific, and political issues, these women's educational texts were far more influential in the public realm than has been previously represented. Written deliberately to change the public mind, these texts spurred their many readers to action and reform.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351872141
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Researchers have neglected the cultural history of education and as a result women's educational works have been disparaged as narrowly didactic and redundant to the history of ideas. Mary Hilton's book serves as a corrective to these biases by culturally contextualising the popular educational writings of leading women moralists and activists including Sarah Fielding, Hester Mulso Chapone, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Sarah Trimmer, Catharine Cappe, Priscilla Wakefield, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Marcet, Elizabeth Hamilton, Mary Carpenter, and Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow. Over a hundred-year period, from the rise of print culture in the mid-eighteenth century to the advent of the kindergarten movement in Britain in the mid-nineteenth, a variety of women intellectuals, from strikingly different ideological and theological milieux, supported, embellished, critiqued, and challenged contemporary public doctrines by positioning themselves as educators of the nation's young citizens. Of particular interest are their varying constructions of childhood expressed in a wide variety of published texts, including tales, treatises, explanatory handbooks, and collections of letters. By explicitly and consistently connecting the worlds of the schoolroom, the family, and the local parish to wider social, religious, scientific, and political issues, these women's educational texts were far more influential in the public realm than has been previously represented. Written deliberately to change the public mind, these texts spurred their many readers to action and reform.
Women, Gender, and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Author: Temma Berg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611461421
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
This edited collection, a tribute to the late noted eighteenth-century scholar Betty Rizzo, testifies to her influence as a researcher, writer, teacher, and mentor. The essays, written by a range of established and younger eighteenth-century specialists, expand on the themes important to Rizzo: the importance of the archive, the contributions of women writers to the canon of eighteenth-century literature and to an emerging print culture, the sometimes fraught relations within the eighteenth-century family, the relationship between life and literature, and, finally, the role of female companionship in women’s lives. Divided into three sections, “Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” “Living in the Eighteenth-Century World,” and “Afterlives,” the fourteen essays that form the body of the collection treat such topics as epistolarity, fraternal relations in novels and in families, women and travel in Jane Austen’s novels, the pleasures and challenges of searching through archives to understand the complex entanglements of eighteenth-century families, the changing reception of Alexander Pope’s poetry, and intersections among race, class, gender, and sexuality in a famous early-nineteenth-century Scottish libel case. The final essay of the fourteen connects the archetypal eighteenth-century figure of the seduced and abandoned woman to Sophie Calle’s 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition entitled Take Care of Yourself, which the author reads as a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century letter novel.The book is framed by an introduction that situates the book as part of the ongoing redefinition of the archive of eighteenth-century literature and an afterword that gives a personal account of Rizzo’s career and her indelible legacy as friend, mentor, and professional model. The contributors use a variety of methods in their scholarship, but a common strand is archival research and close reading inflected by feminist analysis. The book will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth-century British literature and culture and to those interested in women’s writing and women’s relationships in the eighteenth century—and today—and in feminist literary history. The contributors to the volume practice the kind of scholarship Rizzo was known for—painstaking archival research and attention to the nuances of relationships among eighteenth-century women (and men)—and in so doing shed new light on a number of familiar and not-so-familiar eighteenth-century texts.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611461421
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
This edited collection, a tribute to the late noted eighteenth-century scholar Betty Rizzo, testifies to her influence as a researcher, writer, teacher, and mentor. The essays, written by a range of established and younger eighteenth-century specialists, expand on the themes important to Rizzo: the importance of the archive, the contributions of women writers to the canon of eighteenth-century literature and to an emerging print culture, the sometimes fraught relations within the eighteenth-century family, the relationship between life and literature, and, finally, the role of female companionship in women’s lives. Divided into three sections, “Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” “Living in the Eighteenth-Century World,” and “Afterlives,” the fourteen essays that form the body of the collection treat such topics as epistolarity, fraternal relations in novels and in families, women and travel in Jane Austen’s novels, the pleasures and challenges of searching through archives to understand the complex entanglements of eighteenth-century families, the changing reception of Alexander Pope’s poetry, and intersections among race, class, gender, and sexuality in a famous early-nineteenth-century Scottish libel case. The final essay of the fourteen connects the archetypal eighteenth-century figure of the seduced and abandoned woman to Sophie Calle’s 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition entitled Take Care of Yourself, which the author reads as a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century letter novel.The book is framed by an introduction that situates the book as part of the ongoing redefinition of the archive of eighteenth-century literature and an afterword that gives a personal account of Rizzo’s career and her indelible legacy as friend, mentor, and professional model. The contributors use a variety of methods in their scholarship, but a common strand is archival research and close reading inflected by feminist analysis. The book will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth-century British literature and culture and to those interested in women’s writing and women’s relationships in the eighteenth century—and today—and in feminist literary history. The contributors to the volume practice the kind of scholarship Rizzo was known for—painstaking archival research and attention to the nuances of relationships among eighteenth-century women (and men)—and in so doing shed new light on a number of familiar and not-so-familiar eighteenth-century texts.
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Author: Kate Rumbold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316477894
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
The eighteenth century has long been acknowledged as a pivotal period in Shakespeare's reception, transforming a playwright requiring 'improvement' into a national poet whose every word was sacred. Scholars have examined the contribution of performances, adaptations, criticism and editing to this process of transformation, but the crucial role of fiction remains overlooked. Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel reveals for the first time the prevalence, and the importance, of fictional characters' direct quotations from Shakespeare. Quoting characters ascribe emotional and moral authority to Shakespeare, redeploy his theatricality, and mock banal uses of his words; by shaping in this way what is considered valuable about Shakespeare, the novel accrues new cultural authority of its own. Shakespeare underwrites, and is underwritten by, the eighteenth-century novel, and this book reveals the lasting implications for both of their reputations.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316477894
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
The eighteenth century has long been acknowledged as a pivotal period in Shakespeare's reception, transforming a playwright requiring 'improvement' into a national poet whose every word was sacred. Scholars have examined the contribution of performances, adaptations, criticism and editing to this process of transformation, but the crucial role of fiction remains overlooked. Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel reveals for the first time the prevalence, and the importance, of fictional characters' direct quotations from Shakespeare. Quoting characters ascribe emotional and moral authority to Shakespeare, redeploy his theatricality, and mock banal uses of his words; by shaping in this way what is considered valuable about Shakespeare, the novel accrues new cultural authority of its own. Shakespeare underwrites, and is underwritten by, the eighteenth-century novel, and this book reveals the lasting implications for both of their reputations.