Description

Book Synopsis
Written as a collection of letters in which very different accounts of the action are unsupervised by sustained authorial comment, Richardson's novel Clarissa offers an extreme example of the capacity of narrative to give the reader final responsibility for resolving or construing meaning. It is paradoxical then that its author was a writer committed to avowedly didactic goals. Tom Keymer counters the tendency of recent critics to suggest that Clarissa's textual indeterminacy defeats these goals by arguing that Richardson pursues subtler and more generous means of educating his readers by making them 'if not Authors, Carvers' of the text. Discussing Richardson's use of the epistolary form throughout his career, Keymer goes on to focus in detail on the three instalments in which Clarissa was first published, drawing on the documented responses of its first readers to illuminate his technique as a writer and set the novel in its contemporary ethical, political and ideological context.

Table of Contents
Preface; A note on references and abbreviations; 1.Reading epistolary fiction; 2. Casuistry in Clarissa; 3. The part of the serpent; 4. Forensic realism; Postscript; Bibliography; Index.

Richardsons Clarissa 18C Reader 13 Cambridge Studies in EighteenthCentury English Literature and Thought Series Number 13

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    A Paperback by Tom Keymer

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      View other formats and editions of Richardsons Clarissa 18C Reader 13 Cambridge Studies in EighteenthCentury English Literature and Thought Series Number 13 by Tom Keymer

      Publisher: Cambridge University Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 6/24/2004 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780521604406, 978-0521604406
      ISBN10: 0521604400
      Also in:
      Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 Literary studies: general

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Written as a collection of letters in which very different accounts of the action are unsupervised by sustained authorial comment, Richardson's novel Clarissa offers an extreme example of the capacity of narrative to give the reader final responsibility for resolving or construing meaning. It is paradoxical then that its author was a writer committed to avowedly didactic goals. Tom Keymer counters the tendency of recent critics to suggest that Clarissa's textual indeterminacy defeats these goals by arguing that Richardson pursues subtler and more generous means of educating his readers by making them 'if not Authors, Carvers' of the text. Discussing Richardson's use of the epistolary form throughout his career, Keymer goes on to focus in detail on the three instalments in which Clarissa was first published, drawing on the documented responses of its first readers to illuminate his technique as a writer and set the novel in its contemporary ethical, political and ideological context.

      Table of Contents
      Preface; A note on references and abbreviations; 1.Reading epistolary fiction; 2. Casuistry in Clarissa; 3. The part of the serpent; 4. Forensic realism; Postscript; Bibliography; Index.

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