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epistolary novel |
Also found in: Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.03 sec. |
epistolary novelNovel in the form of a series of letters written by one or more characters. It allows the author to present the characters' thoughts without interference, convey events with dramatic immediacy, and present events from several points of view. It was one of the first novelistic forms to be developed. It was foreshadowed by Aphra Behn's poem cycle Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1683). The outstanding early example is Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740); distinguished later works include Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker (1771) and Pierre Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782). The genre remained popular up to the 19th century. Its reliance on subjective points of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| Yet all of these last, however, partook of the power of an authentic letter: that is, they claimed a personal, perhaps intimate, knowledge of the events being described, and a careful examination of the rhetoric employed in them makes clear just how the epistolary form could be deployed to establish some sort of truth. Though the theological impressions of Paul's letter perceived solely through its epistolary form are admittedly implicit, Paul's actions, derived from a narrative reading are essentially explicit. Elizabeth MacArthur, Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form (Princeton, 1990): 3-9, 31-2. |
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