Description
Book SynopsisNarrative Mourning explores death and its relics as they appear within the confines of the eighteenth-century British novel. It argues that the cultural disappearance of the dead/dying body and the introduction of consciousness as humanity’s newfound soul found expression in fictional representations of the relic (object) or relict (person). In the six novels examined in this monograph—Samuel Richardson's
Clarissa and
Sir Charles Grandison; Sarah Fielding's
David Simple and
Volume the Last; Henry Mackenzie's
The Man of Feeling; and Ann Radcliffe's
The Mysteries of Udolpho—the appearance of the relic/relict signals narrative mourning and expresses (often obliquely) changing cultural attitudes toward the dead.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Trade Review"Oliver’s study represents a fascinating and welcome addition to eighteenth-century literary studies. Considering the novel of sensibility and the gothic novel in relation to death,
Narrative Mourning addresses contemporary beliefs about death, the dead body, the soul, and the material objects associated with death. Oliver explores relics—objects such as waxen
transi and hair jewelry—and relicts—the people left behind after a death occurs. Throughout, she offers a number of insightful readings, from the high body count of
David Simple and its sequel, to Richardson’s
Sir Charles Grandison with the mock-widow and pseudo-ghost Clementina della Porretta, to the haunting narrative strategies of
The Man of Feeling." -- Bonnie Latimer * author of Making Gender, Culture and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson *
"With its extensive close readings of both the novel of sensibility and the Gothic novel, Kathleen M. Oliver’s
Narrative Mourning: Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel compellingly argues for the cultural disappearance of the dead in its lucid examination of relics and relicts in fictional representations of death and loss. Its distinctive focus on objects, persons, and ghosts offers a fascinating and well-needed study of the role of melancholy and mourning in the eighteenth-century novel." -- Jolene Zigarovich * author of Writing Death and Absence in the Victorian Novel *
"'Death and loss haunt the eighteenth-century British novel,'" writes Kathleen M. Oliver in her compelling study,
Narrative Mourning. From Clarissa Harlowe's mourning rings to her own corpse in
Clarissa; from portraits to wax effigies in
The Mysteries of Udolpho; from relics to relicts in
David Simple, Volume the Last, and
Grandison; from torn manuscript to lively spectral narrator in
The Man of Feeling, Oliver's careful readings limn the dynamic 'lives' of eighteenth-century literary remains." -- Mary Elizabeth Hotz * author of Literary Remains: Representations of Death and Burial in Victorian England *
"[
Narrative Mourning's] clearly marked conclusions...eloquently and often lyrically summarize the concerns of each chapter and section while signposting the more difficult arguments in the interest of accessibility." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Relic
Objects
1 “With My Hair in Crystal”: Commemorative Hair Jewelry and the Entombed
Saint in Samuel Richardson’s
Clarissa (1748)
2 “You Know Me Then”: The Relic versus the Real in Ann Radcliffe’s
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Part I. The Secret Life of Portraits
Part II. Death as the Lost Beloved
Persons
3 “All the Horrors of Friendship”: Counting the Bodies in Sarah Fielding’s
David Simple (1744) and
Volume the Last (1753)
Part I. The Sorrows of Young David: Melancholia
Part II. Double Vision: Allegory
4 “It is All for You!”: Dying for Love in Samuel Richardson’s
The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753)
Ghosts
5 “‘Tis at Least a Memorial for Those Who Survive”: The It-Narrator, Death
Writing, and the Ghostwriter in Henry Mackenzie’s
The Man of Feeling (1771)
Conclusion: Death and the Novel
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
