Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels

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University of Chicago Press, 1994 M03 20 - 272 pages
Desire and Truth offers a major reassessment of the history of eighteenth-century fiction by showing how plot challenges or reinforces conventional categories of passion and rationality. Arguing that fiction creates and conveys its essential truths through plot, Patricia Meyer Spacks demonstrates that eighteenth-century fiction is both profoundly realistic and consistently daring.
 

Contents

DESIRE AND TRUTH
1
SUBTLE SOPHISTRIES OF DESIRE THE FEMALE QUIXOTE
12
INVENTING GOOD STORIES
34
OF PLOTS AND POWER RICHARDSON AND FIELDING
55
THE IDEAL WOMAN AND THE PLOT OF POWER
85
THE SENTIMENTAL NOVEL AND THE CHALLENGE TO POWER
114
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS ANN RADCLIFFE
147
ENERGIES OF MIND NOVELS OF THE 1790s
175
THE NOVELS WISDOM AUSTEN AND SCOTT
203
AFTERWORD
235
NOTES
241
WORKS CITED
245
INDEX
255
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About the author (1994)

Patricia Meyer Spacks is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of eleven previous books, including Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels and Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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