Publication

1996 - University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

Language

English

Word Count

41,250 words, Guess

Page Count

165 pages

Identifiers

and 2 more
  • Goodreads3351631
  • LibraryThing3390837

Classifications

  • DDC823/.509355
  • LCCPR858.C66 S74 1996

Description

Twentieth-century historians of the early novel, most prominently Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Terry Castle, have canonized fictions that portray the individual in sustained tension with the social environment. Such fictions privilege a strongly linear structure. Recent reexaminations of the canon, however, have revealed a number of early novels that do not fit this mold. In The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740-1775, Betty Schellenberg identifies another kind of plot, one that focuses on the social group - the "conversational circle" - as a model that can affirm traditional values but just as often promotes an alternative sense of community. Schellenberg offers a model for exploring a range of novels that experiment with narrative patterns.

Subjects

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