ebook img

Nation and Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day PDF

513 Pages·2006·3.67 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Nation and Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day

Nation and Novel BY THE SAME AUTHOR H. G. Wells Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching James Joyce The Failure of Theory: Essays on Criticism and Contemporary Fiction Authors and Authority: English and American Criticism 1750–1990 Shadows of the Future (AS EDITOR) H. G. Wells: The Critical Heritage Science Fiction: A Critical Guide H. G. Wells’s Literary Criticism (with Robert M. Philmus) Learning from Other Worlds The Reception of H. G. Wells in Europe (with John S. Partington) Nation & Novel The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day PATRICK PARRINDER AC AC GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork #PatrickParrinder2006 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2006 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbyNewgenImagingSystems(P)Ltd.,Chennai,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby ClaysLtd,StIvesplc ISBN0–19–926484–8 978–0–19–926484–1 For Anna and Monika, and for Mia and Eve This page intentionally left blank Preface and Acknowledgements Nation and Novel is a literary history of the English novel and its dis- tinctive,oftensubversivecontributiontoideasofnationhood.InitIhave concentrated for the most part on the major novelists, those whose writings have been most influential and have attracted a lasting and international readership. I have engaged in more detailed textual inter- pretation than is usual in literary history, pursuing the approach to the nature of the novel form and its relationship to English national identity that I outline in Chapter 1. My primary intellectual debt in writing this bookhasbeentothesmallarmyofliterarycriticsandculturalhistorians who have transformed the study of English fiction of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in recent decades. This book could not have been written without their labours of historical research,textualediting,culturaltheorizing,andreinterpretation.Fewof the scholars on whom I have drawn are explicitly named in the chapters that follow—the alternative would have been to have put their names, whichcanbedistractingforthenon-specialistreader,oneverypage—but myappreciationoftheirworkisnolessheartfeltforthat.Allcitationsin the text are identified in the notes, and it is there and in the Further Reading that my indebtedness can be traced. Nation and Novel has taken me many years to write—I am embar- rassedtosayhowmany—andtherehavebeenanumberoffalsestarts.At every stage I have benefited from the encouragement, criticism, and support of more friends and colleagues than I can possibly name. Above all,IwouldthanktheUniversityofReadingforinstitutionalandtechnical support and for research leave, and my students with whom I have dis- cussedsomanyofthenovelsthatfeatureinthesepages.Iamprofoundly indebted to the Leverhulme Trust for granting me a Major Research Fellowship (2001–4), without which this book might never have been completed. I have received invaluable detailed comments from those friends who have been willing to read and criticize draft chapters or sections, including Eric Homberger (a comrade of almost forty years), AndrzejGasiorek,DavidGervais,DavidSmith,ZohrehSullivan,andJim Hurt.Earlierversionsofsomeofthismaterialhavebeengivenasseminar or conference papers and, in some cases, published in journals: in this respect I would particularly thank David Blewett, Regenia Gagnier and Angelique Richardson, Annette Gomis, Susana Onega, Max Saunders, viii Preface and Acknowledgements JosephWiesenfarth,LawrencePhillips,CatherineHall,andStefanKohl. Parts of Chapters 6, 9, 12, and 14 have appeared in a different form in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Victorian Literature and Culture, and International Ford Madox Ford Studies, respectively. Others to whom I am deeply grateful for their encouragement, support, and intellectual stimulus include Coral Howells (the best of colleagues), Michael Foot (whosentmebacktoDisraeliandHazlitt),RonKnowles(whopresented me with a complete set of Scott’s novels), Robert Baldock, Christine Berberich, Maria Teresa Chialant, Christie Davies, Loraine Fletcher, JohnLucas,CoraKaplan,HermioneLee,MichelleReid,JohnPilling,Sue Roe, Sita Schutt, Mohammad Shaheen, John Spiers, John Stotesbury, John Sutherland, Darko Suvin, Charles Swann, Marina Warner, Frances Wilson, and Michael Wood. In earlier years I learned much from two peerlesscriticsofthenovel,TonyTannerandRaymondWilliams.Some friendsandcolleagueshavehelpedmemostthroughasingleconversation which set me on a track I might not have found for myself: I think par- ticularly of Miche`le Barrett, Andrew Gurr, Athena Leoussi, Giulio Lepschy, Brian Vickers, and others. For unfailing technical support (and so much else) I am indebted to Carole Robb, Jan Cox, and my daughter Monika.SpecialthanksareduetomyeditorsatOxfordUniversityPress, Sophie Goldsworthy, Andrew McNeillie, and Tom Perridge, and to my copy-editor, Mary Worthington, whose guidance and expertise have contributed immeasurably to this book in its final form. My greatest debt is to Jenny Bourne Taylor, who has spurred me to keepwriting,helpedmetoshapethisworkinmorewaysthansheperhaps knows, and put up with the burden of living with its author with a love, cheerfulness, and forbearance that have never failed. Of Jenny’s scho- larship, intellectual curiosity, and deep knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuryliteratureandhistory,allIcansayisthattheydeserve a better book than this one. P. P. Contents Introduction 1 1. The Novel and the Nation 9 2. Cavaliers, Puritans, and Rogues: English Prose Fiction from 1485 to 1700 35 3. Cross-Grained Crusoe: Defoe and the Contradictions of Englishness 63 4. Histories of Rebellion: From 1688 to 1793 82 5. The Novel of Suffering: Richardson, Fielding, and Goldsmith 106 6. The Benevolent Robber: From Fielding to the 1790s 126 7. Romantic Toryism: Scott, Disraeli, and Others 145 8. Tory Daughters and the Politics of Marriage: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte¨, and Elizabeth Gaskell 180 9. ‘Turn Again, Dick Whittington!’: Dickens and the Fiction of the City 213 10. At Home and Abroad in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction: From Vanity Fair to The Secret Agent 232 11. Puritan and Provincial Englands: From Emily Bronte¨ to D. H. Lawrence 258 12. From Forster to Orwell: The Novel of England’s Destiny 291 13. From Kipling to Independence: Losing the Empire 321 14. Round Tables: Chivalry and the Twentieth-Century English Novel-Sequence 341 15. Inward Migrations: Multiculturalism, Anglicization, and Internal Exile 380 Conclusion: On Englishness and the Twenty-First-Century Novel 406 Notes 415 Author Biographies 455 Further Reading 472 Index 487

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.