Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the Eighteenth-Century ReaderCambridge University Press, 2004 M06 24 - 296 pages 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. |
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Aaron Hill analogy Anna authority Barbauld becomes Belford Carroll casuistical casuistry challenge character Clarissa Clarissa's death concerned conduct context correspondence criticism debate Deism Delany Eighteenth-Century epistolary form epistolary novel evidence evil example experience explicitly fact Familiar Letters father father's house fiction Fielding Fielding's Fleetwood FM XV garden Harlowe Place heart Henry Fielding Ibid implications innocent insists instalment interpretation Jacobite Johnson judgment justice Lady Bradshaigh later Les Liaisons dangereuses libertine literary Lovelace Lovelace's marriage Mary Delany means Milton mind moral Mulso narrative narrator novelist Oxford Pamela Paradise parents particular plot political Pope rape reader reading recognised Relative Duties reports response rhetorical Samuel Richardson Sarah Fielding Seasonable Examination seems sense Sentiments Shamela Silvester to Richardson Silvester's simply Sir Charles Grandison social story suggests Susanna Highmore tells Terry Castle Tom Jones truth Vade Mecum voice whole words writing wrote