Trollope, Seriality, and the ‘Dullness’ of Form

Abstract

Trollope's serial fiction satirizes literary tropes and conventions in order to produce a sense of historical veracity. In the Barsetshire series, Trollope uses undeveloped or 'embryo' plots in order to build narrative suspense within highly conventional plots. Within plots so conventional that conclusions are foregone, Trollope engineers excitement by offering multiple paths toward the foregone conclusion.

Institutions

“…Trollope's series "elongat[e] time," as Carolyn Dever puts it, drawing the perspective beyond any single character's focus. 3 Taken together-for the two sequences share several characters and overlapping place names-Trollope's Barsetshire and Palliser novels encompass a "fictional chronology [that] spans forty-three years," as Frank Robbins calculates. 4 By their very design, these sequences explore the possibility of placing an institution-rather than a protagonist-at the heart of a narrative.…”