Narrative Mourning Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel / Kathleen M. Oliver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oliver, Kathleen M., author.

Series:

Transits: literature, thought & culture 1650-1850

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Relics in literature.

Mourning customs in literature.

Manners and customs.

English fiction.

Death in literature.

Manners and customs--History--18th century.

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

Genre:

History

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (221 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Lewisberg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Narrative Mourning explores death and its relics as they appear within the confines of the eighteenth-century British novel. It argues that the cultural disappearance of the dead/dying body and the introduction of consciousness as humanity's newfound soul found expression in fictional representations of the relic (object) or relict (person). In the six novels examined in this monograph--Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; Sarah Fielding's David Simple and Volume the Last; Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling; and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho--the appearance of the relic/relict signals narrative mourning and expresses (often obliquely) changing cultural attitudes toward the dead. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Introduction: The Relic

Introduction

1 "With My Hair in Crystal": Commemorative Hair Jewelry and the Entombed Saint in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748)

2 "You Know Me Then": The Relic versus the Real in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

3 "All the Horrors of Friendship": Counting the Bodies in Sarah Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and Volume the Last (1753)

4 "It Is All for You!": Dying for Love in Samuel Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753)

5 " 'Tis at Least a Memorial for Those Who Survive": The It-Narrator, Death Writing, and the Ghostwriter in Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771)

Conclusion: Death and the Novel

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68448-195-3

OCLC:

1153982290