Smollett's Women: A Study in an Eighteenth-Century Masculine Sensibility

by Robert D. Spector

Overview

Although Smollett's obvious masculine sensibility has become a commonplace in criticism of the 18th-century novel, the basis and particularities of that sensibility have never been examined. In actuality, his treatment of women—heroines, victims, and comic or grotesque—proves far more complex than conventional commentary suggests. This study attempts to show that in each category Smollett's treatment depends on the fictional purposes that these characters serve in his novels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313287909
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/22/1994
Series:	Contributions to the Study of World Literature , #56
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Lexile:	1490L (what's this?)

About the Author

ROBERT D. SPECTOR is Professor Emeritus of English and Coordinator of both the divisions of Humanities and of Communications, Fine and Performing Arts at Long Island University-Brooklyn. He is the author of over 400 articles and nine books, many of them on Smollett or aspects of 18th-century English literature, including Tobias George Smollett (1989), Tobias Smollett: A Reference Guide (1980), The English Gothic (1983), Backgrounds to Restoration and Eighteenth Century English Literature (1989), and Political Controversy (Greenwood Press, 1992).

Table of Contents

Shaping Forces: Society, Personality, and Literary Tradition
Heroines
Fallen Women and Women as Victims
Comic and Grotesque
Notes
Bibliography
Index