Description
Book SynopsisAdvocating a revised history of the eighteenth-century novel, Novel Cleopatras showcases the novel's origins in ancient mythology, its relation to epic narrative, and its connection to neoclassical print culture.
Trade Review"This book is by no means the last word on the topics of eighteenth-century fiction, women’s writing, and the use of epic or myth, nor does it claim to be. It stands, rather, as a mark of the vibrancy of these interconnected fields. As such, it should be read by all who are interested in the fiction of the eighteenth century, with all its complexities, and in all its incarnations." -- Gillian Dow, University of Southampton *
Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Rites of Initiation: Reading Epic in Eighteenth-Century Britain Returning to Narrative Origins: Finding Alternatives in Vergil’s Aeneid Dido in Barbados: The Case of Spectator Part 1: Demythologizing Dido: Epic and Romance 1 “‘Pulcherrima Dido’: Jane Barker and the Epic of Exile” The “Glory of the Scipio’s”? Exilius’ Romance Rewriting of History Resembling Dido: Reinventing Carthage and Rome Becoming Roman: Exilius and Jacobite Identity Representing Troy Town: Barker’s Jacobite Nostalgia 2. “‘What is there of a Woman Worth Relating?’ Revising the Aeneid in Henry Fielding’s Amelia “A Fortress on a Rock”: New Epic Foundations in Amelia “A Good Woman and Yet”: Harrison and Epic Precedents Dalila, Jezebel, Medea? Miss Mathews Mrs. Bennet-Atkinson and “All the Fortune given her by her Father” Part 2: Mythologizing Cleopatra: Romance Historiography and the Queens of Egypt 3. “‘Making History out of Nothing’: Creating a Women’s Classical Canon in Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote” The Example of Outlandish People: Romance Values and the Geopolitical Landscape Laws of its Own: An Empire of Love? “But for the famous Scudéry”: Reviving Classical Precedents “A Position almost too Evident for Proof”: Arabella and the Divine 4. “‘Shame’—or ‘Courtly Glory’? Scripting Augustan History in Sarah Fielding’s Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia” On Pleasing Delusions: Reading The Lives Against the Grain Imagining Power: Fielding’s Cleopatra and the Construction of History Being Made a Sacrifice: Octavia and Roman Virtue 5. “Whose ‘Wild and Extravagant Stories’? Challenging Epic in Clara Reeve’s Progress of Romance” Epic in Prose: Redefining Women’s Fiction Revising Origins: The Bible as Oriental Tale Penelope, Medea, Deianeira: Classical Epic Revisited Seizing Narrative Control: Lessons from Cleopatra and Scheherazade
