The Pleasures of "the World": Rewriting Epistolarity in Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen.
This essay revisits the apparent decline of the epistolary novel in the late eighteenth century in order to argue that the change in popularity of the epistolary genre was not political but mediahistorical. Focusing on Frances Burney's Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796) and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda...
| Published in: | Eighteenth Century Fiction Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 67 - 90 |
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| Format: | Book Review |
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University of Toronto Press
Fall2016
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=118579001&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 118579001 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08406286 7SD jtl: Eighteenth Century Fiction issn: 08406286 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Fall2016 vid: 29 iid: 1 pid: 678 pub: University of Toronto Press artinfo: ui: 118579001 10.3138/ecf.29.1.67 ppf: 67 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 1005KB tig: atl: The Pleasures of "the World": Rewriting Epistolarity in Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen. aug: au: King, Rachael Scarborough affil: Assistant professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara su: Cecilia (Book : Burney) Camilla: Or, a Picture of Youth (Book) Belinda (Book : Edgeworth) Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840 Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849 Fiction Bloom, Lillian D. Bloom, Edward A. Kirkpatrick, Kathryn J. sug: subj: Cecilia (Book : Burney) Camilla: Or, a Picture of Youth (Book) Belinda (Book : Edgeworth) Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840 Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849 Fiction Bloom, Lillian D. Bloom, Edward A. Kirkpatrick, Kathryn J. ab: This essay revisits the apparent decline of the epistolary novel in the late eighteenth century in order to argue that the change in popularity of the epistolary genre was not political but mediahistorical. Focusing on Frances Burney's Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796) and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801)--the three novels that Jane Austen highlights in the "defence of the novel" section of Northanger Abbey (1817)--I argue that Burney and Edgeworth transitioned away from epistolary narration and towards an authoritative third-person voice in order to distinguish their works from the other entertainment media with which the novel competed in the 1780s and 1790s. Seeing the epistolary genre as a fading trend, they used their works to comment on similarly ephemeral fads such as masquerades, Italian opera, and the pleasure garden. By separating the novel from the world of London media, these authors built a bridge from the anarchic scene of eighteenth-century entertainment to the hierarchical dominance of the Victorian novel. pubtype: Review doctype: Book Review src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Eighteenth Century Fiction is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Eighteenth Century Fiction holder: University of Toronto Press dt: @attributes: year: 2016 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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