Risk and the English Novel : From Defoe to McEwan / Julia Hoydis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoydis, Julia, Author.

Series:

Buchreihe der Anglia ; Volume 66.

Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series ; 66

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 665 pages).

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Taking the cue from the currency of risk in popular and interdisciplinary academic discourse, this book explores the development of the English novel in relation to the emergence and institutionalization of risk, from its origins in probability theory in the late seventeenth century to the global 'risk society' in the twenty-first century. Focussing on 29 novels from Defoe to McEwan, this book argues for the contemporaneity of the rise of risk and the novel and suggests that there is much to gain from reading the risk society from a diachronic, literary-cultural perspective. Tracing changes and continuities, the fictional case studies reveal the human preoccupation with safety and control of the future. They show the struggle with uncertainties and the construction of individual or collective 'logics' of risk, which oscillate between rational calculation and emotion, helplessness and denial, and an enabling or destructive sense of adventure and danger. Advancing the study of risk in fiction beyond the confinement to dystopian disaster narratives, this book shows how topical notions, such as chance and probability, uncertainty and responsibility, fears of decline and transgression, all cluster around risk.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Risk Theory and Narrative Fiction - An Interdisciplinary Overview

1. Calculating a New View of Life

2. Defoe and his Protagonists at Large in the Risk Society

3. Swift, Smollett, Sterne, and Walpole: Fears of Masculinity and Parodies of Calculation

4. Picturing Female Youth at Risk: Camilla

5. Old and New Concerns

6. Precariousness, Accidents, and Divisions

7. Epic Tales of Ambition and Speculation

8. The Dangers of Human Nature and the Struggle Between the Sexes

9. A Sense of Endings

10. Gendered Routines of Risk-Taking

11. Running Out of Time

12. Domestic (In)securities

Epilogue

Works Cited

Subject Index

Index of Persons

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9783110615418

311061541X

OCLC:

1121641962