Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English NovelsUniversity 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 |
245 | |
255 | |
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Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels Patricia Meyer Spacks No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
action Amelia Ann Radcliffe Anna appears Arabella Austen authority Booth calls attention century character claims Clarissa concern conventional daughter declares desire dominance eighteenth-century novels Ellena embodies Emily Emily's emotional emphasizes energy of mind erotic Evelina Fanny Hill Fanny's fantasy father feeling Female Quixote feminine fiction Fielding's force Gothic Gothic novels heart Heart of Midlothian heroine human husband imagination implicit implies insists interpretation Jane Austen Jeanie Johnson Jones Lennox's literary Lovelace Lovelace's lover male Mansfield Park marriage marry masculine meaning Miss moral Mysteries of Udolpho narrative narrator narrator's nature novelists Pamela passion plot plotters possibility principle protagonists provides Radcliffe Radcliffe's rape reader relation Richardson romance Schedoni Scott sense Sense and Sensibility sensibility sentimental novels sexual Sidney social Sophia story structure struggle sublime suggests tells tion Tom Jones Tristram Shandy truth Udolpho virtue Waverley Waverley's wishes woman women young Zeluco