Novel machines : technology and narrative form in enlightenment Britain /

Novel machines : technology and narrative form in enlightenment Britain /

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Drury, Joseph, author.
Edition:	First edition.
Imprint:	Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017. ©2017
Description:	xii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism. Technology in literature. Machinery in literature. Narration (Rhetoric) English fiction. Machinery in literature. Narration (Rhetoric) Technology in literature. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11398636

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	0198792387 9780198792383
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-248) and index.
Summary:	Eighteenth-century fiction is full of mechanical devices and contrivances: Robinson Crusoe uses his gun and compass to master his island and its inhabitants; Tristram Shandy's conception is interrupted by a question about a clock and he has his nose damaged at birth by a man-midwife's forceps; Ann Radcliffe's gothic heroines play musical instruments to soothe their troubled minds. In Novel Machines, however, Joseph Drury argues that the most important machine in any eighteenth-century novel is the narrative itself. Like other kinds of machine, a narrative is an artificial construction composed of different parts that combine to produce a sequence of causally linked actions. Like other machines, a narrative is designed to produce predictable effects and can therefore be put to certain uses. Such affinities had been apparent to critics since Aristotle, but they began to assume a particular urgency in the eighteenth century as authors sought to organize their narratives according to the new ideas about nature, art, and the human subject that emerged out of the Scientific Revolution.

Regenstein, Bookstacks

Loading map link

Holdings details from Regenstein, Bookstacks
Call Number:	PR858.T4 D78 2017
c.1	Checked out Request via Interlibrary Loan Need help? - Ask a Librarian