Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Also available in print.

O século XVIII foi um período de grandes mudanças na estrutura social e econômica vigente. Como conseqüência, a forma de organização do espaço de moradia também se alterou. Houve uma reordenação do espaço doméstico com a criação de lugares privados dentro e fora da casa e a valorização dos jardins ao redor das grandes propriedades rurais inglesas. A ascensão da nova classe média e um crescente interesse pela introspecção e privacidade propiciaram a formação destes espaços reservados ao isolamento. A partir do surgimento do romance na primeira metade do século XVIII, o espaço doméstico viu-se valorizado e descrito com mais atenção na narrativa literária. Este cuidado em retratar a vida doméstica na literatura surgiu a partir do desejo de representar a vida dos homens comuns de modo mais autêntico. Em Pamela, romance do escritor inglês Samuel Richardson publicado pela primeira vez na Inglaterra em 1740, observamos esta ênfase no espaço interior do recolhimento e da introspecção. A relação que se estabelece entre as personagens e o espaço dentro do romance é vital para a construção do enredo. / Great social and economic changes were brought about in the eighteenth-century causing, among other alterations, the rearrangement of the living spaces in the houses. This reorganization of the domestic space was responsible for the creation of private spaces inside and outside the great English country houses together with an improvement in the surrounding gardens. At that time the new middle classes were gaining more and more political and economic power and developing a taste for privacy, which required the creation of specific places inside and outside the houses for the enjoyment of the pleasures of isolation and introspection. With the rise of the novel in the first half of the eighteenth century, this domestic space was also valued, pictured and described with more attention in literature. This increasing interest in the domestic life is associated with a wish to portray the everyday lives of ordinary men with greater authenticity. In Pamela, a novel by Samuel Richardson published for the first time in England in 1740, this emphasis in the private space of isolation and introspection is clearly depicted. The deep correlation between space and characters in the novel is vital for the development of the plot.

O século XVIII foi um período de grandes mudanças na estrutura social e econômica vigente. Como conseqüência, a forma de organização do espaço de moradia também se alterou. Houve uma reordenação do espaço doméstico com a criação de lugares privados dentro e fora da casa e a valorização dos jardins ao redor das grandes propriedades rurais inglesas. A ascensão da nova classe média e um crescente interesse pela introspecção e privacidade propiciaram a formação destes espaços reservados ao isolamento. A partir do surgimento do romance na primeira metade do século XVIII, o espaço doméstico viu-se valorizado e descrito com mais atenção na narrativa literária. Este cuidado em retratar a vida doméstica na literatura surgiu a partir do desejo de representar a vida dos homens comuns de modo mais autêntico. Em Pamela, romance do escritor inglês Samuel Richardson publicado pela primeira vez na Inglaterra em 1740, observamos esta ênfase no espaço interior do recolhimento e da introspecção. A relação que se estabelece entre as personagens e o espaço dentro do romance é vital para a construção do enredo. / Great social and economic changes were brought about in the eighteenth-century causing, among other alterations, the rearrangement of the living spaces in the houses. This reorganization of the domestic space was responsible for the creation of private spaces inside and outside the great English country houses together with an improvement in the surrounding gardens. At that time the new middle classes were gaining more and more political and economic power and developing a taste for privacy, which required the creation of specific places inside and outside the houses for the enjoyment of the pleasures of isolation and introspection. With the rise of the novel in the first half of the eighteenth century, this domestic space was also valued, pictured and described with more attention in literature. This increasing interest in the domestic life is associated with a wish to portray the everyday lives of ordinary men with greater authenticity. In Pamela, a novel by Samuel Richardson published for the first time in England in 1740, this emphasis in the private space of isolation and introspection is clearly depicted. The deep correlation between space and characters in the novel is vital for the development of the plot.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Leiden, Pays-Bas--Universiteit Leiden, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 225-239. Index.

Inaug.-Diss.--Bonn. / Added t.p., with thesis statement, inserted.

Stories engage a form of virtual play. Though they incorporate language and abstractions, stories engage many of the same biological systems and produce many of the same anatomical responses as simpler games. Like peek-a-boo or tickle play, stories stage dangerous or unpleasant scenarios in a controlled setting. In this way, they help develop cognitive strategies to tolerate, manage, and even enjoy uncertainty. One means is by inspiring confidence in difficult situations by tactical self-distraction. Another is to reframe negative or uncertain situations as learning opportunities, that is, to ascribe meaning to them. While both strategies are useful, each has limitations. In William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, a king succumbs to the desire to make meaning where there is none, and nearly ruins himself in a self-composed tragedy. His friend restores his confidence and enables a happy ending—but only by deceiving him. This deception is benign, but the heroine of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa is nearly ruined by her abductor’s confidence game. Her “happy ending” is made possible only by reframing her rape and death as redemptive transfiguration—which, as many of her readers suggest, is a dubious affair. The hero of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man spends the first half of the novel eliciting his companions’ confidence in order to swindle them, and the second half trying to inspire himself with the same confidence. The novel ends with an ominous impasse: one must trust, but one ought not to. For Samuel Beckett, this impasse is productive. In his middle novels, thought itself emerges from the interplay of spontaneous bouts of irrational confidence and distortive, after-the-fact impositions of spurious meaning. Stories create (illusory) identities, elicit (dubious) hopes, and reinforce (false) assumptions in order to help us cope with the agonies of anticipation and loss, and to transform misfortune, accident, and misery into reward, retribution, and meaning—that is, in a comedy of trauma.

This thesis presents an analysis of the ghosts in Samuel Richardson’s 1747-48 novel Clarissa, and synthesizes traditional literary criticism on that novel with British folklore and ghost traditions. It examines the novel historically and demonstrates that Richardson’s novelistic approach changed between 1740 when he wrote Pamela and 1747 when he began writing Clarissa in that he relies on the ghost image to discuss the complexities of individual identity. In Clarissa, Richardson outdoes his previous attempt at depicting reality in Pamela because his use of the ghost motif allows the audience to see beyond the physical reality of the plot into the spiritual depths of the human heart. Clarissa involves the journey of a young woman attempting to establish a sense of identity and selfhood, and the ghosts of the novel supply a lens for interpreting her course toward a sense of self that transcends the material world, its wants, its objectives, its myriad institutions, and the identity she has constructed by association with those entities.

No description available.

This paper proposes that Samuel Richardson consciously created the motivational complexity of Clarissa Harlowe. The arguments are the following: eighteenth-century scientific interest in motivation influenced Richardson, his Puritanism led him to suspect and emphasize motive, his frequent use of the word motive suggests an awareness, his choice of the epistolary form is ideal for revealing motives, his attention to the ambiguity of motives indicates his interest, and his complexly motivated Clarissa demands a conscious creator. The last argument constitutes the principal section of the study, and Clarissa's motives are analyzed from the events prior to the elopement, through the rape in London, and finally to her death. She is studied as a product of eighteenth-century decorum, individualism, and Puritanism, but also as an intricate personality.

Gardens in Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, or a History of a Young Lady provide a place for the characters to gain knowledge; but without preparation to receive this knowledge - if restrained behind the veil of decorum - they come to harm, rather than constructive awareness. A fine line exists between innocence and experience in these works. The ways in which the characters negotiate this line illustrates the complexities involved in the eighteenth-century understanding of virtue and how society attempted to mediate this issue. This negotiation can be seen largely in specific garden scenes in these two novels. In Clarissa, Clarissa's flight with Lovelace early in the novel demonstrates this negotiation; while in Betsy Thoughtless, this demonstration lies in the garden scene at the end with Betsy and Trueworth. Richardson and Haywood present alternate endings for a virtuous heroine tempted by sex and trapped by domestic politics. The different fates of Clarissa Harlowe and Betsy Thoughtless result from not only the difference between tragedy and comedy, but from the differing views of temptation. I wish to investigate the possible didactic messages behind these alternate endings. In investigating the two treatments of the temptation of the virtuous heroine, I hope to provide new material by asserting the importance of flight from the garden as representative of the fallen woman in Richardson's novel, and the triumphantly virtuous in Haywood's. Clarissa's fall out of the garden proves a previous sin punished, while Betsy's flight from the garden proves her virtue. Since both Clarissa and Betsy Thoughtless, and their authors, are seen as groundbreaking, an abundance of scholarship is available. However, little has been done in connecting the two garden scenes to definitions of temptation. Furthermore, though connections between Milton's Satan and Richardson's Lovelace have been drawn and re-drawn, little critical attention has been devoted to the way in which the Paradise Lost expulsion from the garden may mirror the important flights from the gardens that both Clarissa and Betsy experience.