A novel and an organization would generally be regarded as polar opposites: one deals in fiction, the other in economic realities. This thesis explores the proposition that the novel and the organization share fundamental characteristics of form, function and technique: they work in the same way. The proposition is explored by comparing the emergence of an early English novel, Moll Flanders (1722), and an early English modern organization, the Bank of England (1694). Moll is recognised as significant in the process of the beginning of the form of the English novel; I argue that the Bank can be approached as a primary model of the form of the organization. Building upon Timothy Clark’s exploration of the nature of inspiration1, the thesis argues that ‘the space of composition’, the period from which they emerged, sometimes called the Age of Projects (1680-1720), is inherent in, and inherited by the form of the novel and the organization respectively. They are projects of a projecting age. The metaphor of the project is taken from Defoe’s Essay Upon Projects (1697) and is used as an interdisciplinary lens through which to reconstitute an intimate relationship between the novel and the organization. The thesis is itself understood as a project bringing a reflexive and experiential dimension to the narrative.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582484 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Hamilton, Valerie |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58044/ |
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