Novel Beginnings – Experiments in Eighteenth– Century English Fiction (Yale Guides to English Literature) - Hardcover

Spacks, Patricia Meyer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110316 ISBN 13: 9780300110319

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In 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.

About this title

Review

'Patricia Spacks is a sure-footed guide [and provides] a fuller, deeper
understanding of the eighteenth century novel.' -- Times Literary Supplement, March 9, 2007

Synopsis

This fresh account of eighteenth-century English fiction departs from the traditional focus on the realistic novel to emphasise the many kinds of experimentation that marked the genre before the conventions of the novel were firmly established. Treating well-known works like "Tom Jones" and "Tristram Shandy" in conjunction with less familiar texts like "Sarah Fielding's: The Cry" and "Jane Barker's: A Patchwork Screen for the Ladies", this book evokes the excitement of a multifaceted and unpredictable process of growth and change. Investigating fiction throughout the 1700s, Patricia Meyer Spacks delineates the individuality of specific texts while also suggesting connections among novels. She sketches a wide range of forms and themes, including Providential narrative, psychological thriller, political roman a clef, sentimental parable, political allegory, Gothic romance 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0300110316
• ISBN 13: 9780300110319
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320