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Uncertain boundaries dispositive techniques in Prevost's novels / Baker, Benjamin Hillel.
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Baker, Benjamin Hillel, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Literature.
- Romance literature.
- Romance Languages--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Romance Languages.
- Local Subjects:
- Literature.
- Romance literature.
- Romance Languages--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Romance Languages.
- Genre:
- Academic theses.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (532 pages)
- Contained In:
- Dissertation Abstracts International 78-04A(E).
- Place of Publication:
- [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016.
- Language Note:
- English
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- text file
- Summary:
- This thesis examines the relationship between part and whole in novels by Antoine Francois Prevost to question the modern assumption that prototypical novelistic narrative structure and dispositive structure (chapters, books, volumes, parts, installments, etc.) share the same points of articulation. In Prevost's day, the combination of the unpredictable rhythm of publication in installments and the ever-present possibility of continuation made it difficult for authors and readers to identify a novel's definitive conclusion. This uncertainty led to tension between a novel's concrete parts and its imagined narrative whole, and that tension created what I have termed a segmentary esthetic that stands in contrast to both the more regularly serialized novels of the nineteenth century and to more recent single-installment novels. To support these hypotheses, I first investigate schemas of interaction between dispositive structure and narrative structure in Prevost's novels that differ from modern formal expectations: pseudoworks (works-within-works) and narrative units that cross dispositive boundaries in the Memoires d'un homme de qualite and the Voyages de Robert Lade, and interrupted publication and unauthorized continuation in Cleveland and Memoires d'un honnete homme. I then identify similar interactions in two of Prevost's more formally modern novels La Jeunesse du Commandeur and Histoire d'une Grecque moderne. This study shows that unstable boundaries can be compatible with compositional sophistication, and outlines a new method of analysis that can be applied to narrative fiction from other periods and in other media.
- Notes:
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.
- Advisors: Gerald J. Prince; Christophe Martin; Committee members: Anne Deneys-Tunney; Scott Francis; Catherine Gallouet.
- Department: Romance Languages.
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2016.
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175
- ISBN:
- 9781369338744
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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