Resemblances: on the re-use of romance in three 18th-century novels【翻译】

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been completed had it not been for the contributions of
my father, Paul Toscano. I could not have asked for a better editor, and many portions of this
document were revised with his help and insight. He was the first person to teach me to write, and
to think through the act of writing. It is, therefore, only fitting that he would collaborate with me
in the last project of my education. The second chapter, in particular, would not have been
finished without his help. I am grateful to him for being there when I was struggling the most with
my ideas and my work. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of my mother,
Margaret, whose unconditional love and support made this process easier, and whose
understanding of the academic process brought clarity to my work. I would like to also thank her
for reading and giving me feedback on my project, and for all the times she listened to me talk
about it at length. To my friends, Katlyn Williams, Stephanie Tsank, Annemarie Pearson, Miriam
Janechek, Amanda Healy, Laura Hampton, and Lauren Rosales, whose emotional support,
intellectual support, and conversation has contributed to my thinking and my scholarship. To my
wonderful friend Annmarie Steffes, who has helped me to format, edit, and revise this
dissertation. To my community in the field of Popular Romance studies, all of whom are
exemplary models of what the academy can be. Your friendship, conversation, editorial work, and
intellectual generosity have been formative. To my advisor, Eric Gidal, for his consistent support
and encouragement throughout the writing, editing, and revising of this dissertation. My great
appreciation for your help and guidance. And to the rest of my committee, without whom I would
not have finished and completed this degree.
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ABSTRACT
This study examines three 18th-century novels and their connection to the romances of the
17th century, the middle ages, as well as the Greek romances that flourished during the Roman
Empire. I argue that the novel and the romance differ, not because the novel possesses some
intrinsic formal, structural, or thematic essence wholly and disjunctively different from the
romance, but rather because the two forms have been arbitrarily differentiated over a long
contentious history for ideological and not categorical reasons. Thus, I define the novel not as a
form or a genre, but as a mode and medium—a way and means of expressing story rather than as
a structural, shaping category of story. Romance, on the other hand, is a type of story particularly
interested in how to deal with difference. It asks: How do I deal with difference without
annihilating or exiling it or myself in the process? When the romance gets subsumed into the
novel as the dominant mode of prose fiction, it re-inscribes this ethical aspect of the romance’s
structure through the use of resembling conventions and tropes.
In analyzing how resemblances are treated in three 18th-century novels—Charlotte
Lennox’s The Female Quixote, Sophia Lee’s The Recess, and Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess—
my dissertation focuses on the novel’s re-use of the romance to explore anxieties about
difference and sameness, about moral issues related to personhood, and about the tension
between the individual and the collective. These texts ask: How do we cope with and incorporate
the difference of the other when privilege in rank and perception is assumed by the subjective
self? This question informs familiar and social relations of all kinds. It illuminates the 18th
century’s scientific assumption that reality can be dissected via objective observation. It
influences views of aesthetics, of gender and sexual politics, of creativity and the conflation of
originality with novelty and of repetition with derivativeness.
vi
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
During the 18th-century, many literary critics and writers adopted the view that the novel,
particularly the English novel, was fundamentally different than the prose fiction of previous
centuries. This prose fiction—called the romance—was associated with the feudal, the French
and the feminine, and was derided as being a fictional form inferior to the novel’s more realistic
representational structure. Contemporary literary critics have inherited this attitude, seeing the
novel as the more sophisticated of the two prose forms. In this dissertation I argue that the novel
and the romance do differ, but not because the novel possesses some intrinsic formal, structural,
or thematic essence utterly different from the romance. Rather it is because the two forms have
been arbitrarily differentiated over a long contentious history.
Thus, I define the novel not as a form or a genre, but as a way and means of expressing
story; whereas I argue that romance is a mode of storytelling that is particularly interested in how
to deal with difference. Romance asks: How do I encounter difference without annihilating or
exiling it or myself in the process? When the romance gets subsumed into the novel as the
dominant mode of prose fiction, the novel re-inscribes this ethical aspect of the romance’s
structure through the use of resembling conventions and tropes. In analyzing how resemblances
are treated in three 18th-century novels—Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, Sophia Lee’s
The Recess, and Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess—my dissertation focuses on the novel’s re-use
of the romance to explore anxieties about difference and sameness, about moral issues related to
personhood, and about the tension between the individual and the collective.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER ONE: COURTING DIFFERENCE: PARODIC
COVERTURE IN THE FEMALE QUIXOTE .............................................................................. 38
CHAPTER TWO: ENTOMBING HISTORY: INCEST AND INSET
TALES IN SOPHIA LEE’S THE RECESS, A TALE OF OTHER TIMES ................................... 87
CHAPTER THREE: PERFORMING THE BED-TRICK: METONYMY AND
MISRECOGNITION IN HAYWOOD’S LOVE IN EXCESS .................................................... 134
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 183

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