This thesis explores the cultural, or literary history of taste as a social construct. Taking the mid-eighteenth century as its starting point, the thesis adopts an historicist approach to five very particular texts from this vast history. It begins by focusing on three novels: firstly, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) which was published at a time when there was increasing pressure to create `standards' of taste; secondly, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) which belongs to a moment that scrutinised these `standards'; and thirdly, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1837), which reflects an era in which taste is driven by commercial forces. The final chapters explore a significant twentieth-century development in the history of taste: namely, the adaptation of text into film. Here, David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) and Tony Richardson's Tom Jones (1963) become the focus for close investigation. I argue that Lean's Oliver Twist very much belongs to a post-war Britain in which the acquisition of taste was part of a wider framework for maintaining national and social cohesion. Richardson's Tom Jones, I argue, must be read in relation to the cultural revolutions in tastet hat dominatedth e early 1960s.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:416724 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Stevens, Charlotte |
| Publisher | Loughborough University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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