Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English FictionIn this study intended for general readers, eminent critic Patricia Meyer Spacks provides a fresh, engaging account of the early history of the English novel. Novel Beginnings departs from the traditional, narrow focus on the development of the realistic novel to emphasize the many kinds of experimentation that marked the genre in the eighteenth century before its conventions were firmly established in the nineteenth. Treating well-known works like Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy in conjunction with less familiar texts such as Sarah Fielding’s The Cry (a kind of hybrid novel and play) and Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (a novel of adventure replete with sentimental verse and numerous subnarratives), the book evokes the excitement of a multifaceted and unpredictable process of growth and change. Investigating fiction throughout the 1700s, Spacks delineates the individuality of specific texts while suggesting connections among novels. She sketches a wide range of forms and themes, including Providential narratives, psychological thrillers, romans à clef, sentimental parables, political allegories, Gothic romances, and many others. These multiple narrative experiments show the impossibility of thinking of eighteenth-century fiction simply as a precursor to the nineteenth-century novel, Spacks shows. Instead, the vast variety of engagements with the problems of creating fiction demonstrates that literary history—by no means inexorable—might have taken quite a different course. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 34
Page
... The Novel of Manners 160 7 Gothic Fiction 191 8 The Political Novel 222 9 Tristram Shandy and the Development of the Novel 254 Afterword: What Came Next 277 Suggestions for Further Reading 287 Works Cited 293 Index 299.
... The Novel of Manners 160 7 Gothic Fiction 191 8 The Political Novel 222 9 Tristram Shandy and the Development of the Novel 254 Afterword: What Came Next 277 Suggestions for Further Reading 287 Works Cited 293 Index 299.
Page 19
... Tristram Shandy, rarely poured out the kind of physical information that might give imaginative reality to the settings their characters inhabit. The fullest detail appears in the fiction of such novelists as Defoe, for whom a ...
... Tristram Shandy, rarely poured out the kind of physical information that might give imaginative reality to the settings their characters inhabit. The fullest detail appears in the fiction of such novelists as Defoe, for whom a ...
Page 24
... Tristram Shandy survive, although personal letters occasionally offer testimony about someone's immediate reaction to a new work of fiction, little evidence remains of detailed personal responses to the developing genre. Yet how these ...
... Tristram Shandy survive, although personal letters occasionally offer testimony about someone's immediate reaction to a new work of fiction, little evidence remains of detailed personal responses to the developing genre. Yet how these ...
Page 26
... Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones. And, as I have already indi- cated, I am eager to tell a story of eighteenth-century fictional productivity as a whole. The subsequent chapters are largely organized under capacious labels (usually suggesting ...
... Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones. And, as I have already indi- cated, I am eager to tell a story of eighteenth-century fictional productivity as a whole. The subsequent chapters are largely organized under capacious labels (usually suggesting ...
Page 27
... Tristram Shandy also draws on other works from throughout the century to ponder how novelists can mingle disparate novelistic conventions — a matter that calls attention to the necessary arbitrariness of designating Pamela, say, an ...
... Tristram Shandy also draws on other works from throughout the century to ponder how novelists can mingle disparate novelistic conventions — a matter that calls attention to the necessary arbitrariness of designating Pamela, say, an ...
Contents
28 | |
58 | |
4 Novels of Consciousness | 92 |
5 The Novel of Sentiment | 126 |
6 The Novel of Manners | 160 |
7 Gothic Fiction | 190 |
8 The Political Novel | 222 |
9 Tristram Shandy and the Development of the Novel | 254 |
What Came Next | 276 |
Suggestions for Further Reading | 286 |
Works Cited | 292 |
Index | 298 |
Other editions - View all
Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction Patricia Meyer Spacks Limited preview - 2008 |
Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-century English Fiction Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
action adventure appears behavior Caleb Williams calls attention Camilla century chapter characters claims Clarissa concern consciousness conventions conveys crucial David Simple death declares Defoe despite eighteenth eighteenth-century fiction elaborate Eliza Haywood Emma emotional episodes epistolary novel Evelina experience fact Falkland father feeling female Fielding's first-person narrative Gothic Gothic fiction Gothic novels happenings Haywood Hermsprong heroine human Humphry Clinker husband imagined important individual insists Jones kind lack Lady letters literary Lord Elmwood Lord Orville Love in Excess lover Manley marriage marry Matilda means mind Miss Moll Flanders moral mother narrative narrator narrator's nature novel of development novelists offers Pamela pleasure plot political possibility protagonist provides psychological reader reading realism response Richardson Robinson Crusoe romance Roxana Sarah Fielding sense sensibility sentimental fiction sentimental novels servant sexual Sidney Bidulph social story structure sublime suffering suggests tells tion Tom Jones Tristram Shandy virtue women writers Yorick