Hanover Place: Thoughts on 18th Century British Literature

I'd like to apologize for the tardiness of this post. It was meant to go up last night, but it has been a rough week and I must confess that even now, I'm not sure how productive or insightful I can be regarding the completion of the novel Pamela . The second half of Pamela is as unrewarding to this reader as the first. I'm not sure why I have been so put off by this novel, because even though the language and the nature of the novel seem appealing and attractive and easy to read, I've really struggled with this book in more ways than I would have ever imagined. I'm not finished with it and I don't know if I'll ever be finished with it. At this point, I've read as much of it as I can bear to read. And that's not to say that it isn't a good book, it's just to say that for whatever reason, I've felt this struggle and this desire to just throw the book away and never approach it again. It's not a common feeling for me. I love reading....

I am saddened to report that today's post will not be as extensive as I should like it to be. To be frankly honest, I'm a little further behind in reading Pamela than I would like to be (damn you time! how often I wished I had a time turner so I could read and get more accomplished... or even Wells' "New Accelerator" to accomplish the same desire in a fraction of the time). So instead of a response which in all likelihood should probably survey most of the first part of the novel (Vol. 1), I'll be looking at the "virtues" that are inherently featured on the page of Richardson's first few letters and consider how they interact with Samuel Johnson's famous "The Rambler" essay. 1. The first letter (or two letters. I'm not sure how we should number these letters. It is obvious to this reader that both compositions are related, and both are most likely "mailed" together if we are piecing together the framework of the unw...

I am no authority to speak on behalf of the development of the novel, but regarding the various theories presented in the first chapter of Ballaster’s Seductive Forms , I can only conclude that reason and logic would seem to indicate a preference for Michael McKeon’s theory / understanding of the development of the novel as form and object.  Ballaster does a wonderful job at expressing the weaknesses of theories presented by Watt, Davis, and others within the formalism / historicism/ hybrid theory debate. When reviewing these theories, I struggled to grasp the complexity of some of these narratives. I also struggled with what appeared to be a lack of basic logic in terms of the progression of structure and device. The historicists seem to ignore or undervalue the progression of literary tradition. The formalists seem to forget that every writer, regardless of position or gender, are people living in a given time; that as individuals who exert themselves as writers of the pag...