Hanover Place: Thoughts on 18th Century British Literature

Frances Burney's Evelina is a delightful read. There, I said it! I actually really like an 18th century novel! Like much of what we've read this semester, the text is written as a series of letters (epistolary novel) from a series of different voices / perspectives. The earliest letters regard the background to Evelina's situation. One of the themes that develops in these early letters regards identity / social position. At the heart of Evelina's confusion / search for identity, lie her background and rearing under the guise of her "father", Mr. Villars. In these first letters, we are giving a generational backstory suggesting of a place of prominence for Evelina (her mother, after all, was a Lady). The death of her mother and then the death of her father leave Evelina to Mr. Villars, where he does his upmost to educate her and teach her to lead a mild mannered / virtuous / pious life. We don't really get many details of her formal education (save that ...

Walpole's The Castle of Otranto might be one of the first genre based novels written. I don't mean to suggest that there weren't others before, but as Clery's article indicates, it certainly has all of the elements to be consider the first "gothic novel". The fact that novel itself developed the roles and conventions of an entire genre is fascinating; though I have read several "Gothic" texts, I was unprepared for the adventure that awaited me in my attempt at reading The Castle of Otranto . The plot of the novel is incredible simple and formulaic: we are introduced to a prince, an old legend, a tragedy, and then a rape like desire to subvert the ancient legend and continue to maintain social status and relevance. Everything that happens throughout the course of the novel is particularly prepared and for someone who has familiarity with the genre, it can at times read as cliché. But thing to remember is that this came before all those other gothic t...

"No feature of the novel seems to be more obvious and yet easily ignored than its fictionality." - Gallagher, "Rise of Fictionality", pg. 336. First, a obvious observation, regarding the term "fictionality": Gallagher's paper does the term a great injustice, because at no point is the term clearly and concisely defined. In many ways, it feels like we're reading abstractions without any need for abstraction. Gallagher's article/chapter (not sure which) doesn't necessarily or fundamentally (in my humble opinion) offer a truly sound argument as to the "discovery" of "fictionality". There are several arguments that are made, including one particularly troubling to me: writers turned to "fictionality" in order to avoid prosecution (My concern about this statement relies fundamentally on the fact that very clear and obvious fictions existed to the world far before any author ever turned to this sort of thought. ...

If contemporary pop music has taught us anything, it’s that the “haters” are going to “hate, hate, hate”. I’d imagine that when confronted by all the “haters”, Richardson probably just shook them off. Haywood's Anti Pamela is one such story (yes I'm saying that she was a hater. But to be fair, I'd been a hater of Pamela too!). The narrative structure is a bit different. Anti Pamela does incorporate letters, but some of the story is told in traditional third person narration. This is an interesting technique because it gives the reader a much more fulfilled and rounded view of the events which are unfolding in the text. The structure of the story is easy to follow (even if the language at times is very difficult to fully comprehend. Having now read a few pieces by Haywood, I can firmly say that her writing style isn't suited for my tastes. That being said, she's still vitally important to read, and I do see the importance of her work, even if I don't parti...