Enlightenment Fiction and the Scientific Hypothesis

Bender, John B.

doi:10.2307/2902945

Cited by 23 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…When a novel claims not to describe true events but to tell the truth about the reader, and to be the gauge of its own accuracy, who is to say whether it is transparently false, cleverly deceptive, or neither? From one perspective, the novel merely articulates a hypothesis that anyone may reject or may indulge with perhaps only an intellectual curiosity about the consequences (Bender 1997). For readers like Lady Louisa Stuart and her mother and sisters—readers whom Mackenzie meant to reach—the novel's efficacy was taken for granted and any failure would reflect on them, not on the book (Scott 1930, 273).…”

Section: Evading Fraud In Sentimental Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentimental Frauds

Stern¹

2011

Law soc. inq.

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The 2006 class action against James Frey, concerning his fabrications in A Million Little Pieces, was the first suit of its kind in the United States. There is nothing new about false memoirs, so what can explain the lawsuit? When the book was promoted on “Oprah's Book Club,” viewers were invited to respond emotionally, and saw their responses as a form of testimony. Those responses produced a sense of betrayal and inauthenticity when Frey's falsehoods were revealed. This view finds support in the eighteenth‐century sentimental novel, which similarly linked readers' reactions to the author's emotional authenticity. Fraud was an ongoing concern for sentimental novelists, some of whom used elaborate editorial to ploys to disavow responsibility for the text, while others populated their novels with fraudulent characters, intended as foils for the protagonist. An investigation of these novels helps to reveal the implications of the Frey case for future claims of literary fraud.

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Section: Evading Fraud In Sentimental Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentimental Frauds

Stern¹

2011

Law soc. inq.

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“…Fludernik provides an overview of competing traditions of scholarship on fictionality as a way of addressing its historicity and ongoing debates over when this category emerged as an alternative to truth or lying. She furthermore seeks to provide theoretical clarity by stressing the distinction in the German tradition between the fictive and the fictional and builds on earlier claims by scholars such as McKeon (1987McKeon ( , 2005 and John Bender (1998) to argue for the rise of factuality as a more plausible way to frame the emergence of the realist novel. Phelan assesses the overlaps and divergences between Gallagher's historical account of the "rise of fictionality" and the emergent rhetorical approach to fictionality.…”

Section: Fictionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Dawson

2018

Poetics Today

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The novel is both a type of narrative and a distinct literary genre. This introduction argues that theoretical accounts of formal elements of narrative fiction, on the one hand, and historical investigations into the development of the novel, on the other, suffer from a lack of methodological exchange. It sketches out the interrelated disciplinary histories of the fields of narrative theory and novel studies and anatomizes the theoretical ground they share in determining their objects of study before identifying four topics of convergence: fictionality, surface reading and computational narratology, diachronic narratology and novelistic history, political criticism and new technologies. These topics provide a frame for ongoing debates which the essays in this special issue seek to engage with and intervene in.Keywords narratology, novel studies, fictionality, distant reading, surface reading This special issue of Poetics Today is designed to issue a challenge: how can we develop more sustained and productive theoretical and methodological exchanges between the broad fields of novel studies and narrative theory? The polemical fault lines between these two scholarly enterprises are well established. One is historical, ideological, thematic, and interpretative; the other is ahistorical, scientific, formalist, and abstract. These distinctions are simplistic but recognizable and retain a rhetorical force that frames our sense of the challenge. The research questions and methods of novel studies and

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“…15 Prefacing the Principia with the analogy between hypotheses and the romance (a genre well known to the reading public for its unrealistic plots and fantastical notions) made the 'hypotheses non fingo' accessible to a wider audience. 16 This was no small feat, given the Principia's reputation as a book 'for the Few' because of 'the Manner and Matter of it placing it out of the Reach of the Generality even of Learned Readers'. 17 This is where a divide between Newton's own ideas and their public dissemination was formed.…”

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Antiquitas non fingo: Newton, the Moderns and the Science of Ancient History

Mattana¹

2020

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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In his posthumous The Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) Isaac Newton re‐dated a number of significant events in ancient history, most importantly the Argonautic expedition and the Fall of Troy. This article explores the eighteenth‐century reception of the Chronology as a text contiguous with Newton's previous works on natural philosophy. In particular, it will be argued that the Chronology was considered as proof that the moderns had made history into a scientific discipline based on principles like those delineated in Newton's Principia.

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Enlightenment Fiction and the Scientific Hypothesis

Cited by 23 publications

References 3 publications

Sentimental Frauds

Sentimental Frauds

Introduction

Antiquitas non fingo: Newton, the Moderns and the Science of Ancient History

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