The Secret Life of Things

Animals, Objects, and It-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England

Buch | Softcover

372 Seiten

2023
Bucknell University Press,U.S. (Verlag)
978-1-68448-470-6 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

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.

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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The It-Narrative and Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory
Mark Blackwell
Part I: The Stories Things Tell
The Spirit of Things
Barbara M. Benedict
The Rape of the Lock as Still Life
Jonathan Lamb
Personal Effects and Sentimental Fictions
Deidre Lynch
Suffering Things: Lapdogs, Slaves, and Counter-Sensibility
Markman Ellis
PartII:ApproachingIt-Narratives
It-Narrators and Circulation: Defining a Subgenre
Liz Bellamy
Britannia’s Rule and the It-Narrator
Aileen Douglas
Speaking Objects: The Circulation of Stories in Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction
Christopher Flint
Hackwork: It-Narratives and Iteration
Mark Blackwell
Occupying Works: Animated Objects and Literary Property
Hilary Jane Englert
Circulating Anti-Semitism: Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal
Ann Louise Kibbie
Corkscrews and Courtesans: Sex and Death in Circulation Novels
Bonnie Blackwell
It-Narratives: Fictional Point of View and Constructing the Middle Class
Nicholas Hudson
Part III: It-Narratives in Transition
The Moral Ends of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Object Narratives
Lynn Festa
Discreet Jewels: Victorian Diamond Narratives and the Problem of Sentimental Value
John Plotz
Contributors
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	08.08.2023
Co-Autor	Barbara M. Benedict, Jonathan Lamb, Deidre Lynch, Markman Ellis
Zusatzinfo	3 color illustrations, 6 B-W illustrations
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	481 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-68448-470-7 / 1684484707
ISBN-13	978-1-68448-470-6 / 9781684484706
Zustand	Neuware