Models of Reading - Paragons and Parasites in Richardson, Burney, and Laclos

Two predominant critical assumptions about Samuel Richardson--that he is a feminist and that his novels aim to exert a straightforward didactic influence on readers--are challenged by this comparative study of female exemplarity in Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison, Evelina, and Les Liaisons dangereuses in a theoretically and historically informed context, in order to investigate the ideologically charged terrain of models and modeling in eighteenth-century epistolary fiction. The female subjectivity transacted by Clarissa's text-reader relation is imagined as a site not of ethical transformation but of crippling shame and self-reproach. Koehler's readings produce a trajectory in which Burney and Laclos, writing within thirty-five years of Clarissa's publication, reject Richardson's use of female exemplarity as a weapon.

About the author

Martha J. Koehler is associate professor of English at University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg.

Product details

• Authors: Martha Koehler, Martha J Koehler, Martha J. Koehler
• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9781611482096
• ISBN: 978-1-61148-209-6
• No. of pages: 328
• Dimensions: 167 mm x 244 mm x 23 mm
• Weight: 649 g
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies