Manchester University Press
8 Truth and fiction
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Gerd Bayer
Abstract
This concluding chapter discusses the role played by realism in English Restoration fiction, written at a time when journalistic news about British and continental affairs created in readers a growing need for more or less truthful representations of reality. Writers increasingly addressed this need also in fictional texts, which accordingly added more realistic descriptions or openly related to real-world events through coded references. At the same time, various meta-fictional moments signal to the readers that they are reading fictions, suggesting that readers were well aware that realism was only ever a second-degree reality, even for early modern audiences. The chapter again points to the body of the reader as a site where presence is created, for instance when books include songs to be sung aloud.
Abstract
This concluding chapter discusses the role played by realism in English Restoration fiction, written at a time when journalistic news about British and continental affairs created in readers a growing need for more or less truthful representations of reality. Writers increasingly addressed this need also in fictional texts, which accordingly added more realistic descriptions or openly related to real-world events through coded references. At the same time, various meta-fictional moments signal to the readers that they are reading fictions, suggesting that readers were well aware that realism was only ever a second-degree reality, even for early modern audiences. The chapter again points to the body of the reader as a site where presence is created, for instance when books include songs to be sung aloud.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i 1
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Note on the transcription of texts x
- Introduction 1
-
Part I The rise of the novel as genre
- 1 The novel and its critics 25
- 2 The temporality of genre 32
-
Part II Paratexts: the genesis of genre
- 3 Seventeenth-century writing 57
- 4 Paratext and drama 73
- 5 Paratext and prose 91
-
Part III The Restoration novel
- 6 Narrating, telling, and speaking 148
- 7 Types, characters, individuals 170
- 8 Truth and fiction 189
- Conclusion 215
- Endnotes 220
- Bibliography 281
- Index 317
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i 1
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Note on the transcription of texts x
- Introduction 1
-
Part I The rise of the novel as genre
- 1 The novel and its critics 25
- 2 The temporality of genre 32
-
Part II Paratexts: the genesis of genre
- 3 Seventeenth-century writing 57
- 4 Paratext and drama 73
- 5 Paratext and prose 91
-
Part III The Restoration novel
- 6 Narrating, telling, and speaking 148
- 7 Types, characters, individuals 170
- 8 Truth and fiction 189
- Conclusion 215
- Endnotes 220
- Bibliography 281
- Index 317
