Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Ian Duncan
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:308
Dimensions(mm): Height 216,Width 138
Category/GenreLiterary studies - c 1800 to c 1900
Literary studies - fiction, novelists and prose writers
ISBN/Barcode 9780521021067
ClassificationsDewey:823.0850908
Audience
Professional & Vocational
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations Worked examples or Exercises

Publishing Details

Publisher Cambridge University Press
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publication Date 13 October 2005
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Modern Romance examines the relationship between the revival of romance form and the ascendancy of the novel in British literary culture, from 1760 to 1850. The revival of romance as the literary embodiment of a national cultural identity provided a metaphor for the 'authenticity' of the novel itself, set against the changing formations of modern life. The material conditions, cultural status and formal repertoire of prose fiction were given a canonical transformation, leading to the form's nineteenth-century heyday, in Scott's Waverley novels. Ian Duncan's illuminating and innovative study begins with the first identification of modern prose fiction with romance form in the late eighteenth-century Gothic novel, and moves through Scott's highly influential dialectical blend of romance and history, to his relations with his successor in the role of national author, Charles Dickens.