The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1684484707 ISBN 13: 9781684484706

Publisher: Bucknell University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Enriching and complicating the history of fiction between Richardson and Fielding at mid-century and Austen at the turn of the century, this collection focuses on it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike, and advances important work on consumer culture and the theory of things. The contributors bring new texts—and new ways of thinking about familiar ones—to our notice. Topics range from period debates about copyright to the complex relationships with object-riddled sentimental fictions, from anti-Semitism in Chrysal to jingoistic imperialism in The Adventures of a Rupee. Essays situate it-narratives in a variety of contexts: changing attitudes toward occult powers, the development of still-life painting, the ethical challenges of pet ownership, the cult of Sterne and the appearance of genre fiction, the emergence of moral-didactic children’s literature, and a better-known tradition of Victorian thing-narratives. Stylistically and thematically consistent, the essays in this collection approach it-narratives from various theoretical and historical vantage points, sketching the cultural biography of a neglected literary form.

Published by Bucknell University Press.
Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

About this title

About the Author

MARK BLACKWELL is a professor of English at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He is the editor of British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 and his work has appeared in ECTI, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Life, The Cambridge History of the English Novel, and The Blackwell Companion to the English Novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1684484707
• ISBN 13: 9781684484706
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Blackwell Mark