The epistolary mode and the first of Ovid's Heroides

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan F. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Henry Fielding ◽  
Large Element ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Epistolary Form ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
As If

In April 1741 there appeared a slim volume entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews by a certain Mr Conny Keyber, whose name is generally supposed to conceal that of the novelist Henry Fielding. Shamela, to give the book its more familiar title, was a parody of Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded, which had been published to great acclaim the previous year. In a series of letters purportedly sent to each other by the main characters, the story unfolds of the honest servant-girl Pamela, her efforts to avoid seduction by her master Mr B., and her eventual marriage to him. Fielding's chief target was the morality of the book (Pamela's virtue contains a disturbingly large element of self-interest), but in passing he drew cruel attention to some of the pitfalls of the epistolary form as a vehicle for narrative. One passage in particular deserves quotation, from Letter VI, which Shamela writes to her mother at (so we are duly informed at the top of the letter) twelve o'clock on Thursday night:Mrs Jervis and I are just in Bed, and the Door unlocked; if my Master should come – Odsbods! I hear him just coming in at the Door. You see I write in the present Tense, as Parson Williams says. Well, he is in Bed between us, we both shamming a Sleep, he steals his Hand into my Bosom, which I, as if in my Sleep, press close to me with mine….

scholarly journals When Do Powerful Stakeholders Give Managers the Latitude to Balance All Stakeholders’ Interests?

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flore M. Bridoux ◽  
Pushpika Vishwanathan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Value Appropriation ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
As If

Research in instrumental stakeholder theory often discusses the benefits of a stakeholder strategy that balances all stakeholders’ interests as if the firm’s managers were not constrained much in choosing a strategy. Yet, through their value appropriation behavior, stakeholders with high bargaining power can significantly constrain managers’ choices. Our objective is, therefore, to understand when powerful stakeholders give managers the latitude to balance all stakeholders’ interests, rather than forcing them to satisfy primarily their own interests. Building on enlightened self-interest and the justice literature, we identify five motivational drivers that help explain powerful stakeholders’ value appropriation behavior. We next explore the endogenous relationship between the stakeholder strategy adopted by the firm and its effect on powerful stakeholders’ value appropriation behavior. This article complements instrumental stakeholder theory by looking at powerful stakeholders’ motivation to exercise their bargaining power, and in so doing brings powerful stakeholders’ moral responsibility in the treatment of weak stakeholders to the forefront.

Wuthering Heights and the Relics of the Epistolary Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 180-208
Author(s):  
Jeanne M. Britton
Keyword(s):  
Racial Difference ◽  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Wuthering Heights ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Epistolary Fiction ◽  
As If

This chapter argues that a novelistic version of sympathy negotiates transitions between oral, written, and printed texts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The mode of vicarious narration that earlier chapters locate in the decline of epistolary fiction culminates in a logic of epistolarity that justifies this novel’s narrative form. Brontë’s novel also transforms Enlightenment conceptions of sympathy through the shared identity between Heathcliff and Catherine, which returns to the extremes of familial proximity and racial difference that trouble Enlightenment notions of sympathy: Heathcliff could just as easily be Catherine’s brother or a racial “other.” After explaining that she has “watched and felt” Heathcliff’s sorrows, Catherine declares “I am Heathcliff.” This assertion suggests an assimilation of radical otherness or a complete mirroring of the self in the familial other, as if to annihilate, through the experience of shared suffering, the boundary that separates sibling from stranger.

scholarly journals T. Smollett’s Epistolary Novel ‘The Expedition of Humphry Clinker’

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-80
Author(s):  
Sergei Valentinovich Testsov
Keyword(s):  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
Literary Portraits ◽  
Epistolary Form

This article provides a brief analysis of Tobias Smollett’s ‘The Expedition of Humphry Clinker,’ which is considered to be his best novel. Similar episodes and literary portraits had been featured in his previous works, but the epistolary form, used exclusively in this novel, contributed to lively and extremely convincing characters, as well as vivid and picturesque descriptions.

The Pamela Debate

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Samuel Richardson ◽  
Henry Fielding ◽  
Usual Sense ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
To Come ◽  
As If

This chapter examines a decisive period in English literary history during the 1740s. This decade saw Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding falling into an unplanned but extraordinary artistic competition that would open two vital channels of production in the novel-writing to come: in Richardson's case toward the representation of inward experience as if mediated by no external authority, in Fielding's toward worldly experience as if mediated wholly by an authoritative storyteller. They did not compete in the usual sense, but such was their entangled proximity it nevertheless seemed a contest. The decade began with Richardson's Pamela (1740), followed by Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742), and ended with Richardson's Clarissa (1747–8) and Fielding's Tom Jones (1749). This second pair of novels has long since established itself as the more powerful of the two, rightly enough, but against any other novels of the period the first would easily command superiority.

The Ethical Decision

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
K. E. Løgstrup
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Action ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing ◽  
As If

This chapter considers a variety of ways in which, as fundamentally self-interested individuals, we try to camouflage that self-interest by making it look as if we are behaving rightly: for example, by evading an ethical action by insisting that it requires further reflection, or by inspecting our motives so that the time for action has passed. We reason in this way because we do not like being griped by the decision, and required to act. Nonetheless, our conscience can make us aware of these evasions, while also, in certain extreme or ‘heightened’ situations, we can still come to do the right thing, even while in more ordinary circumstances, when the risks are a lot less, we remain oblivious to the needs of others.

Inventory of a Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 462-483
Author(s):  
Alexander Kluge
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The One ◽  
As If

This chapter looks at the dialogue between Prof. Dr. Burkhardt Lindner, editor of the Benjamin Handbook, and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (1982). According to his exposé of 1939, Walter Benjamin divided Arcades Project into six parts and called the first “Arcades,” the second “Panoramas,” and the next “World Expositions.” And then came “Interiors,” “Streets,” and then finally “Barricades.” He wrote his exposé incidentally in the present tense such that it did not appear like a story from the past, but rather as if he were an eyewitness of something taking place now. He then assigned a figure to each of these six keywords such that there was within Benjamin's imagination one person who did, planned, or achieved something, on the one hand, and an object world naturally far more powerful, on the other. Lindner and Kluge also considers Benjamin's anthropological materialism.

The liturgical present tense

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
Striking Feature ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
As If ◽  
Birth Death

A striking feature of the hymns sung by Christians on Christmas and Easter is that they are often in the present tense even though the events sung about occurred long ago. This chapter explores the significance of what it calls “the liturgical present tense.” The view, common among liturgical theologians, that on the high holy days, events central to the biblical narrative that happened in the distant past are reactualized, is discussed at some length, the conclusion being that the view is false. The chapter then introduces and explains the concept of what it calls “the as-if trope.” A boy talks to his dog as if it were a personal friend, etc. The chapter suggests that when Christians use the present tense in singing about Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, they are using a version of the as-if trope. It closes with a discussion of why they do this.

Security Europeanization since 1989

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-112
Author(s):  
Katherine Graney
Keyword(s):  
Security Policies ◽  
European Security ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
European Values ◽  
As If

This chapter examines the process of NATO expansion since 1989, highlighting the strange fact that NATO claims to be a community of “European” values and identity as much as, if not more than, a strategic and military alliance. This has led NATO gatekeepers to pursue enlargement for rationales other than strict realist self-interest and has led NATO into direct conflict with Russia over the security policies of the ex-Soviet republics, especially Georgia and Ukraine. The chapter examines the unsuccessful efforts of NATO to find ways to cooperate with Russia, and of Russia to reshape the European security sphere to its own ends and according to its own values.

scholarly journals Le présent historique et ses fonctions textuelles

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Kathrine Sørensen Ravn Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Dramatic Effect ◽  
Basic Meaning ◽  
Story Character ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
The Right ◽  
As If

According to some grammarians the use of the historical present tense is a technique for enhancing the dramatic effect of a story by making addressees feel as if they were present at the time of the experience, witnessing events as they occurred. Others have suggested that the historical present represents events as if they were occurring before the speaker’s eyes. My own position on the matter, though, is that the necessity to postulate a “metaphorical shift”, an “as if”, is due to the interpretation of the basic meaning of the present as being contemporality with the speaker’s present and the identification of a speaker (narrator) with an “intradiegetic” participant in the story (character). In support of this position the paper argues that the temporal referential of the present tense is the speech referential, organised by and around the speaker/character. The speech process is an incomplete process with a validation interval closed to the left and open to the right. This property motivates use of the present as a gram-matical vehicle for re-presentation.

scholarly journals Tarnished Virtues: From Richardson to Beardsley

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-120
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Boborykina
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Samuel Richardson ◽  
Henry Fielding ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
Word Combination ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Common Vision ◽  
Made In

The starting point of the article is a statement about “tarnished virtues” by one of the characters of Poor Folk, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel. The word combination evokes various associations, allusions, and numerous variants of interpretation. A remark on virtues made in the frame of an epistolary novel immediately recalls the novels of a coryphaeus of the genre, 18th-Century English writer Samuel Richardson, especially his first one, in which the word “virtue” appears in the title – Pamela Or, Virtue Rewarded. However, Richardson’s comprehension of virtue seems to be quite narrow, a fact that had been already noticed by his contemporary writer Henry Fielding, who wrote a parody on Pamela. A brief analysis of the parody discovers a common vision on the nature of virtue by both Fielding and Dostoevsky, which becomes even clearer when one finds out their mutual reference point – Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The article explores other novels by Richardson, his influence upon European literature as well as his inner correlation with such writers as Karamzin and Pushkin. Besides, the article investigates the question – raised by its author some years ago – of a certain similarity between the plotlines of Clarissa and Poor Folk, the appearance of “Lovelace” in Dostoevsky’s first book, and the sudden turn of the plot from Richardson’s glorification of virtue to Dostoevsky’s dramatic realism. A few interpretations of Poor Folk are briefly analyzed, including that of Aubrey Beardsley, who illustrated the novel. Several explanations of the sentence on “tarnished virtues” are explored, and finally, the author offers a new one.

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