Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form
    Unavailable
    Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form
    Unavailable
    Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form
    Ebook304 pages6 hours

    Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form

    By Elizabeth Jane MacArthur

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Challenging the view of epistolary narrative as a faulty precursor to the nineteenth-century realist novel, Elizabeth MacArthur argues that the openness and flexibility that characterize correspondences, both real and fictional, reflect the preoccupations of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her readings of the Lettres portugaises, Mme du Deffand's correspondence with Horace Walpole, and Rousseau's La Nouvelle Hlose propose an alternative to closure-oriented theories of narrative as they uncover an interplay between two forces: a tendency towards closure and meaning (metaphor) and a tendency towards openness and desire (metonymy). While such an interplay structures all narrative, the epistolary form differs from the third or first person in the extent to which metonymy predominates. The author shows how critics and editors of correspondences have attempted to control their metonymy, channeling epistolary energy into univocal meaning. By juxtaposing real and fictional epistolary works, MacArthur reveals the similarities between the two, particularly their "extravagance": ambiguity, openness, and forward-moving energy.

    Originally published in 1990.

    The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJul 14, 2014
    ISBN9781400860821
    Unavailable
    Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form

    Related to Extravagant Narratives

    Titles in the series (6)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms

      Sep 18, 2019

      “An aphorism,” Friedrich Nietzsche aphoristically wrote, “is an audacity.” Exploring the pithiest of phrases, from Ben Franklin to Susan Sontag. The post The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      Chronicling Life’s White Machine

      Jul 31, 2017

      It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.   The post Chronicling Life’s White Machine appeared

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Forgotten History of the Chapter

      Nov 27, 2023

      The chapter possesses the trick of vanishing while in the act of serving its various purposes. The post The Forgotten History of the Chapter appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      On The Cult Of Craftism

      Oct 14, 2022

      If craft is a writer’s fundamental heartbeat, then craftisim is hypertension. The post On the Cult of Craftism appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Losing Higher Ground

      Jul 9, 2021

      Losing Higher Ground
      19 min read

    • Article

      Making the List

      Mar 1, 2022

      TO UNDERSTAND WHAT an index is, it may help to begin with what it is not. An index is not a table of contents—such a table would feed multitudes—but it does lay out in more granular form all of the contents of a book. An index is not a concordance, s

      3 min read

    • Article

      Brevity Is the Soul of It: In Praise of Short Books

      Jul 27, 2017

      Short books are not narratives, but devices: instead of the telescope of a long novel or history tome, they are a pair of sunglasses, allowing you to see the world, briefly and temporarily, in a different shade. The post Brevity Is the Soul of It: In

      4 min read

    • Article

      How The Sonnet Turns

      May 1, 2020

      This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation

      30 min read

    • Article

      On Literature and Consciousness

      Feb 18, 2021

      This is the greatest opening line in imaginative literature, because it’s the first one ever written. How can the invention of fiction itself be topped? The post On Literature and Consciousness appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Birth Of The Semicolon

      Aug 1, 2019

      The Birth Of The Semicolon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Nov 21, 2021

      by Bryan Walpert Mākaro Press — $35 It needs to be made clear that this is a science fiction novel, specifically of the time travel variety. It takes place in three alternating narrative streams, one of which is told in reverse, so that the couple wh

      7 min read

    • Article

      On Punks

      Mar 1, 2022

      Until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting by a single person in US history occurred in the middle of the night of June 12, 2016 in an Orlando nightclub, Pulse. 49 lives were lost and countless affected, including those of us read

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ghosts in Manhattan

      Mar 1, 2024

      Ghosts in Manhattan
      3 min read

    • Article

      King, God, Smart-Ass Author: Reconsidering Metafiction

      Oct 21, 2019

      Ed Simon draws on Daffy Duck, classic literature, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and more to redraw the rigid limits of metafiction and postmodernism. The post King, God, Smart-Ass Author: Reconsidering Metafiction appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Intriguing And Diverse

      Jun 16, 2022

      Genius of the Fern Loved Gully Amy Hale Strange Attractor Press 2020 Pb, 336pp, £20, ISBN 9781907222863 Ithell Colquhoun’s star is in the ascendant. Born in India in 1906, she lived a life amongst the Surrealists in the Thirties and early Forties, ha

      9 min read

    • Article

      Stories in Formaldehyde: The Strange Pleasures of Taxonomizing Plot

      Oct 2, 2020

      There is something to be said about the cool rectilinear logic that claims any story can be stripped down to its raw schematics and analyzed as fundamental, universal, eternal plots that have existed before Gilgamesh’s cuneiform was wedged into wet c

      16 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    Reviews for Extravagant Narratives

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words