Partisan Politics, Narrative Realism, and the Rise of the British Novel

Narrative realism has long been understood as a full account of "real life" and the individual self. Breaking with this traditional history, Partisan Politics, Narrative Realism, and the Rise of the British Novel demonstrates that the formal conventions of narrative realism emerged at the end of the seventeenth century in response to an explosion of partisan writings that offered rival versions of political selfhood. The novel mediated between the competing Whig, Tory, and Jacobite versions of selfhood that emerged during the upheavals of the 1680s and flourished through the mid 1750s. The rise of the novel was connected to the rise of "the individual," as traditional accounts proposed, but this Whig individual was just one of several partisan versions of the self that were vying for pre-eminence during this period. "Narrative realism has long been understood as a full account of "real life" and the individual self. Breaking with this traditional history, Partisan Politics, Narrative Realism, and the Rise of the British Novel demonstrates that the formal conventions of narrative realism emerged at the end of the seventeenth century in response to an explosion of partisan writings that offered rival versions of political selfhood. The novel mediated between competing Whig, Tory, and Jacobite versions of selfhood that emerged during the upheavals of the 1680s and flourished through the mid 1750s. The rise of the novel was connected to the rise of "the individual," as traditional accounts proposed, but this Whig individual was just one of several partisan versions of the self that were vying for pre-eminence during this period."--Jacket Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: Realism and the Rise of the Novel....Pages 1-16 Political Selfhood and Novelistic Character....Pages 17-43 Tory Ideology and Aphra Behn’s Turn to the Novel....Pages 45-73 Daniel Defoe and the Whig Ideal of Selfhood....Pages 75-102 Partisan Debate and Moderation Politics in Samuel Richardson’s Fiction....Pages 103-127 Jacobite Ideology and Eliza Haywood’s Response to Whig Realism....Pages 129-161 Conclusion: Partisan Realisms and Canon Formation....Pages 163-170 Back Matter....Pages 171-226 This book considers why narrative realism in literature is seen as a 'full account' of 'real life' and the individual self. Unconventionally, Carnell shows that the formal conventions of narrative realism emerged in the seventeenth century in response to an explosion of partisan writings that put into play competing versions of political selfhood.