Rise of the Novel
William Warner in his essay The Elevation of the Novel in England: Hegemony and Literary Theory from which the above quotation is taken outlines his theory of a dependence on the part of Fielding and Richardson on the novels of earlier writers despite their attempts to devalue their work.In this essay I will examine this relationship from Warner's standpoint and show that it is a relationship is both complex and paradoxical.Prior to his first novel in 1749, Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) published, in 1740-41, an advisory work called Letters Written to and for Particular Friends. This publication intended to instil in the reader a correct code of conduct or "how to think and act justly and prudently in the common concerns of life". With the publication of the 1749 novel "Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded, Richardson fully assumed his role as an author expounding the moralistic values of the bourgeois society to which he had ascended from more humble beginnings. This role would become impounded by his two subsequent novels Clarissa: or the History
And yet the fundamentals of a Marxist approach, issues of class and gender, are not the points on which Warner builds his arguments. In these attempts at marginalisation we come to understand Warner's term "hegemonic articulation" (p. Thus was Charlot undone! Thus was she ruined by him that ought to have been her protector!" (Bloomsbury Guide to Erotic Literature. Manley's 1709 The New Atalantis, for example, not only has a seduction plot line featuring a similar master / servant relationship but also a rape scene that appears to offer a base for the attempted rape of Pamela in her room by B. " Here Warner conceptualise readers as "consumers", authors as "producers" and the market place as "a cultural system". The suggestion of struggle here is strongly indicated and the reader naturally draws associations to the foundation of Marxist principle, that of the struggle between the classes. The power relation is the same as in Pamela. Although Manley's heroine, Charlot, is deeply stirred by the advances of the Duke, "nothing but the Dukes kisses could relish her. when rising herself at a little gentle noise she heard from the opening of the door that answered to her bedside, she was quite astonished to see the amorous Duke. His love and resolution gave him a double vigour. Note how adjectives linked to Richardson and Fielding, like "real" and "masters", are exhibited before the reader in quotation marks. And still he had his arms around my neck.
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Acceptance Essays
