Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Spacks, Patricia Meyer
• Haley, Madigan
• Hunter, J. Paul
• Arata, Stephen
• Wicke, Jennifer

Titel

The 1740s

Ist Teil von

• A Companion to the English Novel, 2015, p.1-17

Ort / Verlag

Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library All Obooks

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In a pattern that persisted through the 1740s, many novels focused on an individual's acquisition of knowledge through experience, thus supporting an essential tenet of philosophical empiricism. Novelists such as Henry Fielding, with great formal ambitions, concerned themselves also with literature's traditional obligation to instruct as well as please. Their work reflected large issues that troubled the country, while claiming the value of individual experience as a mode of understanding – for novels’ protagonists and, vicariously, for readers. The satiric impulse also apparent in many novels, however, indicated awareness that understanding did not necessarily imply amelioration for intractable social problems.