Richardson's Clarissa and the eighteenth-century reader / Tom Keymer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keymer, Tom, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 13.

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761. Clarissa.

Richardson, Samuel.

Authors and readers--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Authors and readers.

Books and reading--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Books and reading.

Women and literature--England--History--18th century.

Women and literature.

Epistolary fiction, English--History and criticism.

Epistolary fiction, English.

Rape victims in literature.

Reader-response criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiii, 270 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Richardson's 'Clarissa' & the Eighteenth-Century Reader

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Summary:

Written as a collection of letters in which very different accounts of the action are unsupervised by sustained authorial comment, Richardson's novel Clarissa offers an extreme example of the capacity of narrative to give the reader final responsibility for resolving or construing meaning. It is paradoxical then that its author was a writer committed to avowedly didactic goals. Tom Keymer counters the tendency of recent critics to suggest that Clarissa's textual indeterminacy defeats these goals by arguing that Richardson pursues subtler and more generous means of educating his readers by making them 'if not Authors, Carvers' of the text. Discussing Richardson's use of the epistolary form throughout his career, Keymer goes on to focus in detail on the three instalments in which Clarissa was first published, drawing on the documented responses of its first readers to illuminate his technique as a writer and set the novel in its contemporary ethical, political and ideological context.

Notes:

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

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781139085991

1139085999

9780511553493

0511553498

Publisher Number:

2027/heb07568 hdl