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This book explores the reciprocal influence of friendship ideals and narrative forms in eighteenth-century British fiction. It examines how various novelists, from Samuel Richardson to Mary Shelley, drew upon classical and early modern conceptions of true amity as a model of collaborative pedagogy. Analyzing authors, their professional circumstances, and their audiences, the study shows how the rhetoric of friendship became a means of paying deference to the increasing power of readerships, while it also served as a semi-covert means to persuade resistant readers and confront aesthetic and moral debates head on. The study contributes to an understanding of gender roles in the early history of the novel by disclosing the constant interplay between male and female models of amity. It demonstrates that this gendered dialogue shaped the way novelists imagined character interiority, reconciled with the commercial aspects of writing, and engaged mixed-sex audiences.
List of contents
Introduction: "Errant Stuff".- Chapter 1 "Amiable Fictions; or the Pedagogy of Friendship in Enlightenment Media".- Chapter 2 "Tragedy in Print; or, Epistolary Friendship and Clarissa's Divided Readership".- Chapter 3 "The Property of True Friends; or, Paradoxes of Narration in Sarah Fielding's David Simple".- Chapter 4 "Institutions of Friendship; or, Anonymous Authorship and Political Economy in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall".- Chapter 5 "Enduring Oddity; or, the Friendship of Fools in Sterne's Tristram Shandy".- Chapter 6 "Infernal Fraternity; or, Alienated Readers in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein".- Epilogue: The Novel as a Technology of Friendship.
About the author
Bryan Mangano currently lectures at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, USA. He has published articles in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
Summary
This book explores the reciprocal influence of friendship ideals and narrative forms in eighteenth-century British fiction. It examines how various novelists, from Samuel Richardson to Mary Shelley, drew upon classical and early modern conceptions of true amity as a model of collaborative pedagogy. Analyzing authors, their professional circumstances, and their audiences, the study shows how the rhetoric of friendship became a means of paying deference to the increasing power of readerships, while it also served as a semi-covert means to persuade resistant readers and confront aesthetic and moral debates head on. The study contributes to an understanding of gender roles in the early history of the novel by disclosing the constant interplay between male and female models of amity. It demonstrates that this gendered dialogue shaped the way novelists imagined character interiority, reconciled with the commercial aspects of writing, and engaged mixed-sex audiences.
