1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910483362703321

Autore

Hatton Nikolina

Titolo

The Agency of Objects in English Prose, 1789–1832 [[electronic resource] ] : Conspicuous Things / / by Nikolina Hatton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

3-030-49111-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 247 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

828.50809

Soggetti

Literature, Modern - 18th century

Literature, Modern - 19th century

Books - History

Ethnology - Europe

Civilization - History

Eighteenth-Century Literature

Nineteenth-Century Literature

History of the Book

British Culture

History of Britain and Ireland

Cultural History

Great Britain History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: Introduction: Objects in Prose, from Actants to Things -- Chapter 2: A Pin, A Mirror, and a Pen: Everyday It-Narrators, Conspicuous Tools -- Chapter 3: “Very conspicuous on one of his fingers”: Generative Things in Austen’s Juvenilia, Sense and Sensibility and Emma -- Chapter 4: Unwieldy Objects in De Quincey’s Confessions (1821): Things that Undermine Subjectivity -- Chapter 5: Performing Authorship in the Silver Fork Novel: Managing a Thing Filled with Objects -- Chapter 6: Conclusion: All Those “tables and chairs”—Productive Objects and Chaotic Things?

Sommario/riassunto

The Agency of Objects in English Prose, 1789–1832: Conspicuous



Things engages with new materialist methodologies to examine shifting perceptions of nonhuman agency in English prose at the turn of the nineteenth century. Examining texts as diverse as it-narratives, the juvenile writings and novels of Jane Austen, De Quincey’s autobiographical writings, and silver fork novels, Nikolina Hatton demonstrates how object agency is viewed in this period as constitutive—not just in regard to human subjectivity but also in aesthetic creation. Objects appear in these novels and short prose works as aids, intermediaries, adversaries, and obstructions, as well as both intimately connected to humans and strangely alien. Through close readings, the book traces how object agency, while sometimes perceived as a threat by authors and characters, also continues to be understood as a source of the delightfully unexpected—in everyday life as well as in narrative.