Women and property in the eighteenth-century English novel / April London.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

London, April, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Women and literature.

Property in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 262 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Women & Property in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book investigates the critical importance of women to the eighteenth-century debate on property as conducted in the fiction of the period. April London argues that contemporary novels advanced several, often conflicting, interpretations of the relation of women to property, ranging from straightforward assertions of equivalence between women and things to subtle explorations of the self-possession open to those denied a full civic identity. Two contemporary models for the defining of selfhood through reference to property structure the book, one historical (classical republicanism and bourgeois individualism), and the other literary (pastoral and georgic). These paradigms offer a cultural context for the analysis of both canonical and less well-known writers, from Samuel Richardson and Henry Mackenzie to Clara Reeve and Jane West. While this study focuses on fiction from 1740-1800, it also draws on the historiography, literary criticism and philosophy of the period, and on recent feminist and cultural studies.

Contents:

pt. 1. Samuel Richardson and Georgic. Clarissa and the georgic mode

Making meaning as constructive labor

Wicked condfederacies

"The work of bodies" : reading, writing, and documents

pt. 2. Pastoral. The man of feeling

Colonial narratives : Charles Wentworth and The female American

pt. 3. Community and confederacy. Versions of community : William Dodd, Sarah Scott, Clara Reeve

Confederacies of women : Phebe Gibbes and John Trusler

pt. 4. The politics of reading. The discourse of manliness : Samuel Jackson Pratt and Robert Bage

The gendering of radical representation

History, romance, and the anti-Jacobins' "common sense"

Jane West and the politics of reading.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 242-257) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-11675-9

0-521-03254-7

1-280-15381-4

0-511-11751-5

0-511-14970-0

0-511-32452-9

0-511-48436-4

0-511-05202-2

OCLC:

191035665