1700s
18th century
A01=Cynthia Sundber Wall
analysis
analytical
ann radcliffe
aphra behn
Author_Cynthia Sundber Wall
Category=DSB
close reading
college
consumer
criticism
critique
cultural
culture
daniel defoe
description
domestic
educational
english major
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
figurative language
higher ed
image
john bunyan
landscape
literary
literature
natural
nature
novel
perception
philosophical
science
setting
sir walter scott
textbook
theoretical
theory
transformation
university
victorian
visual
woolf
Product details
- ISBN 9780226871585
- Weight: 652g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jun 2006
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Virginia Woolf once commented that the central image in Robinson Crusoe is an object - a large earthenware pot. Woolf and other critics pointed out that early modern prose is full of things, but bare of setting and description. Explaining how the empty, unvisualized spaces of such writings were transformed into the elaborate landscapes and richly upholstered interiors of the Victorian novel, Cynthia Wall argues that the shift involved not just literary representation, but an evolution in cultural perception. In "The Prose of Things", Wall analyzes literary works in the contexts of natural science, consumer culture, and philosophical change to show how and why the perception and representation of space in the eighteenth-century novel and other prose narratives became so textually visible. Wall examines maps, scientific publications, country house guides, and auction catalogs to highlight the thickening descriptions of domestic interiors. Considering the prose works of John Bunyan, Samuel Pepys, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, David Hume, Ann Radcliffe, and Sir Walter Scott, "The Prose of Things" is the first full account of the historic shift in the art of describing.
Cynthia Sundberg Wall is associate professor of English at the University of Virginia.
