Novel machines technology and narrative form in Enlightenment Britain / Joseph Drury.
| Author/creator | Drury, Joseph |
| Format | Electronic |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication Info | Oxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
| Description | xii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Narratives and machines in enlightenment Britain -- Liberties and machines in Love in Excess -- Realism's ghosts : science and spectacle in Tom Jones -- The speed of Tristram Shandy -- The machine in the ghost : sounds and sensibility in The Mysteries of Udolpho -- Coda : the novel and the Industrial Revolution. |
| Abstract | Eighteenth-century fiction is full of mechanical devices and contrivances: Robinson Crusoe uses his gun and compass to master his island and its inhabitants; Tristram Shandy's conception is interrupted by a question about a clock and he has his nose damaged at birth by a man-midwife's forceps; Ann Radcliffe's gothic heroines play musical instruments to soothe their troubled minds. In Novel Machines, however, Joseph Drury argues that the most important machine in any eighteenth-century novel is the narrative itself. Like other kinds of machine, a narrative is an artificial construction composed of different parts that combine to produce a sequence of causally linked actions. Like other machines, a narrative is designed to produce predictable effects and can therefore be put to certain uses. Such affinities had been apparent to critics since Aristotle, but they began to assume a particular urgency in the eighteenth century as authors sought to organize their narratives according to the new ideas about nature, art, and the human subject that emerged out of the Scientific Revolution. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages [229]-248) and index. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| LCCN | 2017939635 |
| ISBN | 0198792387 hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780198792383 hardcover |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Resources | Access Content Online | ✔ Available |