ON THE ‘SERIOUSNESS’ OF EARLY MODERN ENGLISH FICTION
ON THE ‘SERIOUSNESS’ OF EARLY MODERN ENGLISH FICTION

Summary/Abstract: On the ‘Seriousness’ of Early Modern English Fiction. In his 2013 book, The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature, Franco Moretti explores the complex relationship between aesthetic forms and the values of the society that produced them. Moretti focuses on analysing the connection between the nineteenth-century realist novel and the ethos of the bourgeoisie, by examining the ways in which the features of what he calls ‘serious’ literature developed under the influence of the ‘serious’ bourgeois society. Using Moretti’s analysis, this paper sets out to investigate if and how these features manifest in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century prose fiction, with a view to add an evolutional perspective to Moretti’s thesis.

• Details
• Contents