This master's thesis is primarily concerned with the philosophical conditions of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England that encouraged the emergence of periodical literature and perpetuated the birth of the novel. While most connections between periodical literature and the novel are made on how the former created the readership that ensured the latter's success, I focus on how the epistemology unique to the advent of empirical science together with the growing prominence of casuistic thought created a space in which periodical literature could emerge and the early novel could flourish. I investigate the underlying assertion of a particular philosophical amalgam that I call casuistic-empiricism. Such philosophies encouraged the Renaissance trend that devalued letter-of-the-law thinking, which led ultimately to a significant epistemological transformation in seventeenth-century England. Recognizing the immensity of this epistemological shift, I focus on the early seventeenth-century practice of casuistry as an outgrowth fueled by seventeenth-century natural philosophy. By investigating the poetry and prose of John Donne, I emphasize the pervasive threads of casuistic thought that found parallels in empirical epistemology. I proceed in a linear fashion by following the evolution and growing pervasiveness of casuistic culture into its period of culmination marked by the birth of the Athenian Gazette. Readers' prominent attraction to the periodical is shown to run on a parallel with the incipient empiricism. Indeed, the two prominent lines of thought (empiricism and casuistry) form a dynamic binary where each feeds off of and is fed by the other, culminating in a unique epistemology that aided the emergence of the early novel. Extending this discussion of periodical literature's casuistical qualities into Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, I investigate how Defoe's ties to casuistry are reflected in and perpetuated by Crusoe, illustrating how the novel becomes a medium for resolving cases of conscience. The novel as a genre is shown to be more than just a close relative of the periodical, both genres being spurred into prominence by some of the more salient features attendant to casuistic-empirical philosophy. The novel becomes finally a type of culminating product of a unique casuistic-empirical practice that accounts for the full range of experiences involved in reaching justified conclusions.

Literary realism, that is, texts that seek to represent the actual in literature while achieving a sense of verisimilitude, have historically been analyzed and defined by a number of critics. These critics have, with differing approaches, attempted to make comprehensible what it is that constitutes the realist text. In their process of doing so, many have dismantled this specific category of text and isolated its distinguishing components. This study has sought to challenge and elaborate on three of the most influential, scholarly voices that have articulated such ideas about the realist text: Ian Watt, Eric Auerbach and Roland Barthes. The purpose has been to add to this field of knowledge by increasing our understanding of what it is that constitutes literary realism. This has been done by analyzing three realist works that have been previously examined by these critics, and then, by studying two further realist works, more recent in time. These works are, in the order that they have been approached and analyzed: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (Published in 1722), Gustave Flaubert’s A Simple Heart (Published in 1877), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (Published in 1925), Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road (Published in 2006) and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Published in 2022). As a result, the study has found that technology is a recurring textual element that functions as a coherence-making narrative device in these realist texts, and as a consequence, has laid bare a blind spot in these above-mentioned critics’ definitions of literary realism. Thus, the study suggests that technology should be understood as a distinguishing element in the literary text. The selection of works has, in turn, allowed for the study to both compare and contrast these texts, and to trace the effect that the technological development in the reality preceding the literary text can be said to have on these texts themselves. Here, the study has found that new technologies in the reality preceding the text often occur as new coherence-making textual devices in these literary works, and thus, that the technological development in the actual affects the realist text itself.

Orientador: Suzi Frankl Sperber / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T21:56:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Viegas_ShellidaFernandadaCollina_D.pdf: 120671766 bytes, checksum: 6769e677622ca23add669406b7687de0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Como é possível o mesmo autor, na mesma época, escrever dois romances com a mesma temática e dar-lhes tratamento tão distinto? Essa é a pergunta que intriga os leitores de Defoe ao ler duas das suas principais obras literárias, Moll Flanders (1722) e Roxana (1724), e é também a pergunta que norteou esta pesquisa. Para responder a isso, estudamos a história da leitura, o surgimento e a popularização do romance, a história dos direitos autorais e a influência do público leitor na produção de romances. Isso porque ambas as obras de Defoe tiveram várias edições ao longo do séc. XVIII que se diferenciavam das primeiras tiragens. Visando estabelecer algumas hipóteses para explicar os motivos que levaram os editores a alterar os finais das obras, foram analisadas, nesses romances, as figuras da prostituta, amante, esposa e mãe e a condição da mulher na Inglaterra pré-Revolução Industrial, sem perder de vista a questão da edição e da recepção / Abstract: To what extent is it possible that an author over the same decade had written two novels about the same central theme, but from and with different perspectives? The readers of Daniel Defoe are right to raise this issue after reading Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). This research sets about answering such questions. To this end, I used Defoe's novels to take a close look at the history of reading, the creation and popularity of the novel, copyright implications and the influence of the reader in the production of novels. After all, both novels underwent a series of different editions throughout the eighteenth century. To formulate a working hypothesis to outline the reasons that allowed such changes in editions, I analyzed the figures of the prostitute, lover, wife and mother and the condition of women in pre-Industrial Revolution England in both novels / Doutorado / Literatura Geral e Comparada / Doutor em Teoria e História Literária