Styles of meaning and meanings of style in Richardson's Clarissa / Gordon D. Fulton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fulton, Gordon D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761. Clarissa.

Richardson, Samuel.

Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761--Literary style.

English literature.

Physical Description:

xiv, 250 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Using socially and culturally engaged discourse stylistics, Fulton explores ideologies of social formation, gender, and sexuality in the novel. The first part of the study, "Styles of Meaning," discusses Richardson's use of the genres of sententiousness (moral sentiments and proverbs) to engage questions of ideology. Fulton shows how Richardson draws on the socially significant difference between proverbs and maxims to develop contrasting styles in which his characters establish and defend personal identities in relation to family and friends. The second part, "Meanings of Style," explores ways in which meanings created through linguistic choices in the critical domains of gender and sexuality both sustain and sometimes betray characters struggling either to control or to resist being controlled by others. A contribution to both critical discussion of eighteenth-century fiction and to discourse stylistics committed to relating literary texts to their social and cultural contexts, this study introduces a mode of literary stylistic analysis with exciting possibilities for cultural studies.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Text

Introduction: A Stylistic Approach to Clarissa

Proverbs and the Language of Control

The Moral Sentiment as a Dialogic Style of Meaning

Surprised by Style: Lovelace, Clarissa, and Language for Love

Why Look at Clarissa? Physical Description and Richardson’s Revision of Libertine Style

Sentimental Libertinism: Richardson’s Reform of Libertine Desire

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85807-6

9786612858079

0-7735-6784-4

OCLC:

929121374