Eavesdropping in the novel from Austen to Proust / / Ann Gaylin

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910811327003321
• Autore: Gaylin Ann Elizabeth
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge, U.K. ; ; New York, : Cambridge University Press, 2002
• ISBN: 1-107-12600-2; 1-280-15972-3; 0-511-12076-1; 0-511-04260-4; 0-511-15791-6; 0-511-32986-5; 0-511-48480-1; 0-511-04582-4
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xi, 241 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; ; 37
• Disciplina: 823/.809353
• Soggetti: English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism; Eavesdropping in literature; Comparative literature - English and French; Comparative literature - French and English; French fiction - History and criticism
• 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. 222-236) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: I'm all ears: Pride and Prejudice, or the story behind the story -- Eavesdropping and the gentle art of Persuasion -- Household words: Balzac's and Dickens's domestic spaces -- The madwoman outside the attic: eavesdropping and narrative agency in The Woman in White -- La double entente: eavesdropping and identity in A la recherche du temps perdu -- Conclusion: covert listeners and secret agents.
• Sommario/riassunto: Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust investigates human curiosity and its representation in eavesdropping scenes in nineteenth-century English and French novels. Ann Gaylin argues that eavesdropping dramatizes a primal human urge to know and offers a paradigm of narrative transmission and reception of information among characters, narrators and readers. Gaylin sheds light on the ; social and psychological effects of the nineteenth-century rise of information technology and accelerated flow of information, as manifested in the anxieties about - and delight in - displays of private life and its secrets. Analysing eavesdropping in Austen, Balzac, Collins, Dickens and Proust, Gaylin demonstrates the flexibility of the scene to produce narrative complication or resolution; to foreground questions of gender and narrative agency; to place the debates of privacy and publicity within the literal and metaphoric spaces of the nineteenth-century novel. This 2003 study will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century English and European literature.