Narrative Mourning

Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel

Kathleen M. Oliver

2020
232 pages
$34.95
ISBN 9781684481910
Transits

Narrative Mourning explores death and its relics as they appear within the confines of the eighteenth-century British novel. It argues that the cultural disappearance of the dead/dying body and the introduction of consciousness as humanity's newfound soul found expression in fictional representations of the relic (object) or relict (person). In the six novels examined in this monograph - Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; Sarah Fielding's David Simple and Volume the Last; Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling; and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho - the appearance of the relic/relict signals narrative mourning and expresses (often obliquely) changing cultural attitudes toward the dead.

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Reviews

"In her conclusion, Oliver helpfully elides the differences between the novel of sensibility and the gothic novel, and thus participates in a useful reconsideration of the two kinds of fiction at the end of the eighteenth century as part and parcel of one literary movement. Human death and the relics/relicts that are created, as well as our relationship to them, become dynamic rather than static throughout Oliver's study. This contribution to how we read the eighteenth-century novel and how we reconsider the cult of sensibility in England will continue to have relevance for many years to come."
- Eighteenth-Century Studies, Fall 2023

"Loss resides at the heart of this book, specifically the cultural loss sustained in the face of shifting attitudes toward death in the early modern period...[Narrative Mourning's] clearly marked conclusions...eloquently and often lyrically summarize the concerns of each chapter and section while signposting the more difficult arguments in the interest of accessibility."
-Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Fall 2021

"Oliver's study represents a fascinating and welcome addition to eighteenth-century literary studies [...] Narrative Mourning addresses contemporary beliefs about death, the dead body, the soul, and the material objects associated with death. Oliver explores relics - objects such as waxen transi and hair jewelry - and relicts - the people left behind after a death occurs. Throughout, she offers a number of insightful readings, from the high body count of David Simple and its sequel, to Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison with the mock-widow and pseudo-ghost Clementina della Porretta, to the haunting narrative strategies of The Man of Feeling."
-Bonnie Latimer, author of Making Gender, Culture and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson

"[...] Kathleen M. Oliver's Narrative Mourning: Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel compellingly argues for the cultural disappearance of the dead in its lucid examination of relics and relicts in fictional representations of death and loss. Its distinctive focus on objects, persons, and ghosts offers a fascinating and well-needed study of the role of melancholy and mourning in the eighteenth-century novel."
-Jolene Zigarovich, author of Writing Death and Absence in the Victorian Novel

"'Death and loss haunt the eighteenth-century British novel,' writes Kathleen M. Oliver in her compelling study, Narrative Mourning. From Clarissa Harlowe's mourning rings to her own corpse in Clarissa; from portraits to wax effigies in The Mysteries of Udolpho; from relics to relicts in David Simple, Volume the Last, and Grandison; from torn manuscript to lively spectral narrator in The Man of Feeling, Oliver's careful readings limn the dynamic 'lives' of eighteenth-century literary remains."
-Mary Elizabeth Hotz, author of Literary Remains: Representations of Death and Burial in Victorian England

About the author:

Kathleen M. Oliver is the author of Samuel Richardson, Dress, and Discourse, and her essays on Daniel Defoe, Sarah Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Frances Sheridan, Charlotte Smith, and William Wycherley have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and scholarly collections. In 2002, she received the Emilie du Châtelet Award for Independent Scholarship, bestowed by the Women's Caucus of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $120.00, 978-1-6844-8192-7; EPUB: $34.95, 978-1-6844-8193-4