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      Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship
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      Book

      Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship

      DOI link for Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship

      Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship book

      Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship

      DOI link for Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship

      Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship book

      ByJudith L. Fisher
      Edition 1st Edition
      First Published 2002
      eBook Published 31 December 2016
      Pub. Location London
      Imprint Routledge
      DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315241555
      Pages 312
      eBook ISBN 9781315241555
      Subjects Humanities, Language & Literature
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      Fisher, J.L. (2002). Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315241555

      ABSTRACT

      Drawing on the rhetorical work of James Phelan, Wayne Booth's ethical criticism, recent work on William Makepeace Thackeray, as well as an understanding of the role of skepticism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English thought, Thackeray's Skeptical Narrative and the "Perilous Trade" of Authorship makes a substantial contribution to nineteenth-century reading practices, as well as narratology in general. Judith Fisher combines in this study rhetorical and ethical analysis of Thackeray's narrative techniques to trace how his fiction develops to educate his reader into what she terms a "hermeneutic of skepticism." This is a kind of poised reading which enables his readers to integrate his fiction into their life in what Thackeray called "a world without God" without becoming pessimistic or fatalistic. Although Thackeray's narrative strategies have been the subject of study, most have focused on Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond only, and none look as closely as does this study at actual rhetorical techniques such as his use of pronominalization to interpolate the reader into his skeptical discourse. Fisher also brings her analysis to bear on The Adventures of Philip and The Virginians, Thackeray's last two complete novels, both of which were critical failures even as contemporary critics acknowledged their stylistic excellence. This is the first study to attempt to understand the puzzle of those two books; Fisher recovers them from their marginalized position in Thackeray's oeuvre. Fisher expertly weaves an accessible narrative theory with thoroughgoing knowledge of Thackeray's life in an integrated reading of his entire works. Reading Thackeray holistically in spite of his own disruptive practices, she does full justice to his critical skepticism while elucidating his canon for a new readership.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      chapter 1|43 pages

      The Hermeneutic of Skepticism

      chapter 2|51 pages

      The "Right Line I": Narratorial Collusion and the Perils of "Sternism"

      chapter 3|40 pages

      A Version of a "Man and a Brother": Or, Character into Narrator

      chapter 4|34 pages

      The Rebellious Text and the Resisting Reader

      chapter 5|36 pages

      The Secret History of Henry Esmond

      chapter 6|38 pages

      Infinite Isolations

      chapter 7|41 pages

      "The Abode of Bliss and the Halls of Prismatic Splendour"

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