Narrating Reality : Austen, Scott, Eliot / Harry E. Shaw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shaw, Harry E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817--Technique.

Eliot, George, 1819-1880--Technique.

Scott, Walter, 1771-1832--Technique.

Scott, Walter, 1771-1832--Fictional works.

Fiction--Technique.

Fiction.

Reality in literature.

Narration (Rhetoric)--History--19th century.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Realism in literature.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 280 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Narrating Reality offers a provocative and original critique of nineteenth-century British realist fiction and our ways of understanding it. Paying close attention to the role of the narrator, Harry E. Shaw challenges the denigration of realism that has become a critical orthodoxy in recent decades. Drawing on such thinkers as Erich Auerbach, Jürgen Habermas, and J. L. Austin, Shaw contends that realist novels claim not to replicate the world in their pages or to offer transparent access to it, but to involve readers in a process of narrative understanding adequate to grasping the complexities of life in history. Seen in this light, the works of such novelists as Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and George Eliot, as they depict their own and other cultures and strive to imagine regions of freedom in the dense and constricting web of history, gain a new interest.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. Realism and Its Problems

2. Realism and Things

3. An Approach to Realist Narratives

4. Austen: Narrative, Plots, Distinctions, and Life in the Grain

5. Scott: Realism and the Other

6. Eliot: Narrating in History

Afterword

Appendix: On Tropes and Master Tropes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501718212

1501718215

OCLC:

1080552136