1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778868203321

Autore

London April

Titolo

Women and property in the eighteenth-century English novel / / April London [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1999

ISBN

1-107-11675-9

0-521-03254-7

1-280-15381-4

0-511-11751-5

0-511-14970-0

0-511-32452-9

0-511-48436-4

0-511-05202-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 262 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

823/.809355

Soggetti

English fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

Women and literature - Great Britain - History - 18th century

Property in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 242-257) and index.

Nota di contenuto

pt. 1. Samuel Richardson and Georgic. Clarissa and the georgic mode -- Making meaning as constructive labor -- Wicked condfederacies -- "The work of bodies" : reading, writing, and documents -- pt. 2. Pastoral. The man of feeling -- Colonial narratives : Charles Wentworth and The female American -- pt. 3. Community and confederacy. Versions of community : William Dodd, Sarah Scott, Clara Reeve -- Confederacies of women : Phebe Gibbes and John Trusler -- pt. 4. The politics of reading. The discourse of manliness : Samuel Jackson Pratt and Robert Bage -- The gendering of radical representation -- History, romance, and the anti-Jacobins' "common sense" -- Jane West and the politics of reading.

Sommario/riassunto

This book investigates the critical importance of women to the eighteenth-century debate on property as conducted in the fiction of



the period. April London argues that contemporary novels advanced several, often conflicting, interpretations of the relation of women to property, ranging from straightforward assertions of equivalence between women and things to subtle explorations of the self-possession open to those denied a full civic identity. Two contemporary models for the defining of selfhood through reference to property structure the book, one historical (classical republicanism and bourgeois individualism), and the other literary (pastoral and georgic). These paradigms offer a cultural context for the analysis of both canonical and less well-known writers, from Samuel Richardson and Henry Mackenzie to Clara Reeve and Jane West. While this study focuses on fiction from 1740-1800,  it also draws on the historiography, literary criticism and philosophy of the period, and on recent feminist and cultural studies.