1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910452144503321

Autore

Napier Elizabeth R. <1950->

Titolo

Falling into matter : problems of embodiment in English fiction from Defoe to Shelley / / Elizabeth R. Napier

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2012

©2012

ISBN

1-4426-6432-0

1-4426-9019-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (276 p.)

Disciplina

823/.5093561

Soggetti

English fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

Human body in literature

Mind and body in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Robinson Crusoe: Discord -- 2 Gulliver's Travels: Shock -- 3 Clarissa: Grace -- 4 Tom Jones: Cohesion -- 5 A Simple Story: Dissipation -- 6 Frankenstein: Dissociation -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Falling into Matter examines the complex role of the body in the development of the English novel in the eighteenth century. Elizabeth R. Napier argues that despite an increasing emphasis on the need to present ideas in corporeal terms, early fiction writers continued to register spiritual and moral reservations about the centrality of the body to human and imaginative experience.Drawing on six works of early English fiction - Daniel Defoe&apos;s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift&apos;s Gulliver&apos;s Travels, Samuel Richardson&apos;s Clarissa, Henry Fielding&apos;s Tom Jones, Elizabeth Inchbald&apos;s A Simple Story, and Mary Shelley&apos;s Frankenstein - Napier examines how authors grappled with technical and philosophical issues of the body, questioning its capacity for moral action, its relationship to



individual freedom and dignity, and its role in the creation of art. Falling into Matter charts the course of the early novel as its authors engaged formally, stylistically, and thematically with the increasingly insistent role of the body in the new genre.