Speaking Objects: The Circulation of Stories in Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction

Flint, Christopher

doi:10.2307/463361

Cited by 52 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The objects seek a unified national identity, but they are subject to a variety of dislocations that not only disrupt their storytelling but also complicate the meaning of citizenship. 28 Such a description nicely summarizes, among other things, the quandary of Waverley. It also sheds light on why he does not cross national boundaries and allegiances so much as finds himself literally carried across them.…”

Section: In the Lap Of Historymentioning

confidence: 95%

Waverley and the Object of (Literary) History

Gamer¹

2009

Modern Language Quarterly

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This essay revisits the question of Walter Scott's innovation as a novelist, and Waverley's status as the first historical novel, by showing the degree to which such markers of reputation were fictions of Scott's own making. The essay begins by examining how Scott's manipulation of the novel's date of composition, his ostentatious rejection of contemporary genres, and his later self-review of the novel effectively cleared Waverley of contemporary competitors and bolstered its claims to newness. It then turns to Scott's other strategy, that of looking beyond contemporary generic models to those of the mid-eighteenth century. In thus arguing for Waverley as a rumination on the history of the novel “sixty years since”—as a literary-historical as well as historical novel—the essay considers Scott's debt to the most popular of these midcentury fictions, the object narrative, by reading Waverley in light of its conventions and practices.

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Section: In the Lap Of Historymentioning

confidence: 95%

Waverley and the Object of (Literary) History

Gamer¹

2009

Modern Language Quarterly

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“…1. The object narrative method, also referred to as 'it-narratives' and 'novels of circulation', does have a literary precedent in eighteenth-century England; see, for example, Flint (1998) and Blackwell (2004). As I suggest below, however, Parker's 'novel' differs in important ways from this earlier genre.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrating Being through Phenomena: The Phenomenological and Sociological Insights of Harry Parker’sAnatomy of a Soldier

Gilks

2021

Social Epistemology

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After being severely injured by a mine explosion in Afghanistan, former British soldier, Harry Parker, wrote about his experiences in his debut novel, Anatomy of a Soldier. Narrated by objects, this 'novel' is an innovative and important literary intervention. In this extended review article, I explore the phenomenological and sociological insights of this work. I begin by making two related hermeneutic claims: Firstly, I argue that this work should be understood phenomenologically, exposing how the Self is coextensive with its material world. Secondly, I confront the generic ambiguity of the text and suggest that it should be read as (phenomenologically) autobiographical. Building on this phenomenological interpretation, I then explore three sociological implications of this object narrative method, namely, about motivation, agency, and intersubjectivity: Parker's narrating objects, I argue, unveil a phenomenologically constituted and temporally elongated form of agency. Overall, I show that this 'novel' offers significant insights into experience, behaviour, and Self, both in the context of war and more broadly.

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“…63 Less convincing is Flint's argument that speaking objects reflect authors' anxieties concerning the public exposure of their books. 64 However, as well as reflecting the impact of the growing class of nouveau riche, markets or books, 'it'-narratives offer important creative explorations of some of the philosophical preoccupations arising from the Enlightenment, such as people's increasing sense of separation from, and consequent objective interest in, the material world. This trend is predicated on an increasingly strong dissociation of the human from the non-human from the seventeenth century onwards.…”

Section: Tobacco and The Scientific Separation Of 'Facts' And 'Values'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Eloquence and Oracle’: Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Life and Literature

Russell¹

2021

The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine

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In a seventeenth-century play, tobacco argues for the superiority of its ‘divine breath’ in distilling eloquence and oracle upon the tongue. This essay argues that tobacco’s arrival on European shores is reflected in two distinctive eighteenth-century literary genres, namely ‘object’- or ‘it’-narratives and the ‘poetry of attention’. Such literary works reflect eighteenth-century interest in questions of ‘sentient matter’ and ‘material agency’ and the increasingly detailed examination of nature demanded by empirical science. Using concepts derived from material culture studies and Actor-Network Theory, and examples from the deep history and current landscapes of tobacco in lowland South America, this essay argues that tobacco’s transit from ‘New’ to ‘Old’ World brought with it some cognitive changes that may have had a hitherto unrecognized influence on Enlightenment life and literature.

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Speaking Objects: The Circulation of Stories in Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction

Cited by 52 publications

References 12 publications

Waverley and the Object of (Literary) History

Waverley and the Object of (Literary) History

Narrating Being through Phenomena: The Phenomenological and Sociological Insights of Harry Parker’sAnatomy of a Soldier

‘Eloquence and Oracle’: Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Life and Literature

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