Speaking about literature of the XVII-th century, it is hard to avoid speaking about epistolary novel. Epistolary novel or novel in letters is a kind of novel that is a series of letters to one or more characters of this novel. The letter expresses sincere experiences of heroes, reflected their internal evolution. In the scientific literature epistolary novel is traditionally considered any of the articles on epistolary literature or epistolary form, or in the works on the theory and history of the novel. In the first case epistolary novel is described as a form of epistolary literature in general, the second - as a form of existence of the novel, but not as much as novelistic genre. Various novels, written in the form of letters, may be in this case referred to as social and domestic, psychological, sentimental novels, novels of conduct and sentiment, novels of manners, gallantly, adventure, comic novels, epic novels, etc. (Bray 15).
At the forefront lies the problem of identifying the boundaries of the genre and the volume of the concept under consideration, the fixation of its related events and their delimitation from other adjacent, but not similar in fact, as well as the status of correspondence in the literary text.
It is necessary to distinguish the concept of "epistolary novel" of the more common, such as "epistolary literature", "epistolography”, "epistolary fiction", etc., and motivate the need to consider the novel in letters not as a speech form associated with a very different subject, but as a literary genre (Bray 29).
Consideration of the epistolary novel as a distinct genre structure will be appropriate to begin with the functioning in its form letters and correspondence. This main and, at first sight, purely f...
... middle of paper ...
...the time it was issued. The novel is dedicated to the position of female in society and the consequences which may follow a young girl who does not submit certain rules of conduct. I believe that this novel is a true child of its time and is perfect when seeing it in retrospective. It does not have any original and unique features, it tells one and the same story for numerous times but every time adding something new and more exciting.
Works Cited
Bray, J. The epistolary novel. Washington: Routledge, 2003.
Bunkers, S. L. In search of Susanna. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1996.
Locke, J. E. The Coquette; Or the History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel Founded on Fact. New York: Kessinger Publisher, 2010.
Logan, P. M. The Encyclopedia of the Novel, Volume 1. Berkeley: John Wiley and Sons, 2011.
Miller, F. P. Epistolary Novel. n.a.: VDM Publishing House Ltd, 2010.
Updike, John. "A & P" Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Updike, John. "A & P" Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Munro, Alice. ìPrue.î The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 6th ed. Ed. Micheal Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St.Martinís, 2002. 467-469.
The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2013. 1471 - 1534 -.
The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton narrates the tribulations of an unmarried woman in post-revolutionary America. The author Hannah Webster Foster uses the story of Miss Wharton as an allegory of female moral decay. The highly patriarchal demands that women be submissive, domestic, and married. However, the protagonist Eliza Wharton has conflicting ideas of her expectations within the society. She is highly intelligent and yearns for self-determination. Though the novel is about seduction, Foster significantly altered the basic structure of novels at the time by relating it from the female perspective. The result is a novel that explores several significant themes in post-revolutionary America among them, the existence, and the need for female education.
An example of literature is brought up, where for no apparent reason the historical novel became a popular genre and everyone was reading and writing them despite the fact that the genre had been around for a very long time. He used this example to give a concrete example if his idea, and it appeals to the audience’s
The World Book Encyclopedia. 2000 ed. : p. 78. Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. The "Scarlet Letter" The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Ed.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Roberts, Edgar V., and Robert Zweig. "A Glossary of Important Literary Terms." Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Boston: Longman, 2012. 1945. Print.
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.
Abrams, M.H., The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1993
Stylistically, the book is arranged in rotating chapters. Every fourth chapter is devoted to each individual character and their continuation alo...
Novels for Students. Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 1999. Print.
Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W Norton &, 2012. Print.