Original Subjects: The Child, the Novel, and the Nation

by Ala A. Alryyes

Overview

Original Subjects explores the interweaving of the child-hero and the fortunes of a nation as these are portrayed in a wide selection of novels and national narratives in the French and English traditions. Ala Alryyes examines how these works deploy similar metaphors and signifying narratives in which a homeless child is central.

Taking up such disparate writers and novelists as Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Defoe, Richardson, Diderot, Scott, Stendhal, Balzac, and Disraeli, as well as Homer, St. Augustine, and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that the generational parent–child dynamic is key to understanding the structure of novels, the theory of the state, and the events of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674002630
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2001
Series:	Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature , #46
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Ala Alryyes is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale University.