The Prose of Things : Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century / Cynthia Sundberg Wall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wall, Cynthia Sundberg, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English prose literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Description (Rhetoric)--History--18th century.

Description (Rhetoric).

English language--18th century--Rhetoric.

English language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (331 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Virginia Woolf once commented that the central image in Robinson Crusoe is an object-a large earthenware pot. Woolf and other critics pointed out that early modern prose is full of things but bare of setting and description. Explaining how the empty, unvisualized spaces of such writings were transformed into the elaborate landscapes and richly upholstered interiors of the Victorian novel, Cynthia Sundberg Wall argues that the shift involved not just literary representation but an evolution in cultural perception. In The Prose of Things, Wall analyzes literary works in the contexts of natural science, consumer culture, and philosophical change to show how and why the perception and representation of space in the eighteenth-century novel and other prose narratives became so textually visible. Wall examines maps, scientific publications, country house guides, and auction catalogs to highlight the thickening descriptions of domestic interiors. Considering the prose works of John Bunyan, Samuel Pepys, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, David Hume, Ann Radcliffe, and Sir Walter Scott, The Prose of Things is the first full account of the historic shift in the art of describing.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 A History of Description, a Foundling

2 Traveling Spaces

3 Seeing Things

4 Writing Things

5 Implied Spaces

6 Worlds of Goods

7 Arranging Things

8 The Foundling as Heir

Afterword: Humphry Repton

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9781322080925

1322080925

9780226225029

022622502X

OCLC:

891385266