This section contains 9,214 words (approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: “Evelina's Two Publics,” in The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 147-67.
In the following essay, Thompson offers a re-examination of the relationship between Evelina's literary background and the feminist aspects of the novel. Thompson maintains that Evelina must mediate between two distinct publics: that which is aroused by her as a spectacle, and that which is summoned by her literary self.
In concluding a recent volume of essays devoted to Frances Burney's Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, Margaret Doody makes the following appraisal: “It concerns me that none of these writers seems interested in the background of eighteenth-century literature (literature in its broadest sense) which lies behind Evelina … Attention to the literature does not mean disdaining the biographical approach (after all, what the author has read is an aspect of biography). But it does mean opening up the...
This section contains 9,214 words (approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page) |