ABSTRACT
In the second half of the long eighteenth century, the novel comes to promote the critical reflection of society’s virtues and conventions as an essential attribute of the responsible citizen. It provides narrative opportunities for enlightened instruction by way of suggesting informed agency and the critical consideration of – and potential rebellion against – established and emerging norms. The challenge of omniscient narration through individual sentiment plays a crucial role here, as different narrative perspectives and focalizations are compared to engage with varying ideas of citizenship, justice, and political participation. Proceeding from the idea that changing points of view are an essential pluralistic value, I propose that epistolary novels of the later Hanoverian period, while being formally indebted to established techniques, have a modern and democratic agenda, which they realize with friend characters as homodiegetic narrators.
