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Overview
Jan Gordon proposes that a reviled communicational 'interest' in gossip and its purveyors be given its proper due in the development of the novel in Britain. Commencing with Sir Walter Scott's historically persecuted (but economically and politically necessary) androgynous voices in caves and concluding with Oscar Wilde's premature celebration of gossip at the very moment it is transformed from public opinion to public judgment, the author finds gossip to be both deforming and shaping nineteenth century 'letters' in surprising ways. Like the ignominious orphan-figure of nineteenth-century fiction, gossip is the 'unacknowledged reproduction' searching for a political antecedence which might lend a legitimacy to its often discontinuous testimony, for a culture historically resistant to obtrusive voices.
Synopsis
Jan Gordon proposes that a reviled communicational 'interest' in gossip and its purveyors be given its proper due in the development of the novel in Britain. Commencing with Sir Walter Scott's historically persecuted (but economically and politically necessary) androgynous voices in caves and concluding with Oscar Wilde's premature celebration of gossip at the very moment it is transformed from public opinion to public judgment, the author finds gossip to be both deforming and shaping nineteenth century 'letters' in surprising ways. Like the ignominious orphan-figure of nineteenth-century fiction, gossip is the 'unacknowledged reproduction' searching for a political antecedence which might lend a legitimacy to its often discontinuous testimony, for a culture historically resistant to obtrusive voices.
Booknews
Another look at the history of British 19th century fiction informed by gossips<-->the figures who create a body of criticism within the 19th century text. Gordon (Anglo-American literature, Tokyo U.) applies a master's hand to the subject matter detailing the contribution of the characters who serve as critics in the highly inscripted 19th century social order, including the Misses Bates and Norris in Jane Austen, Br<:o>nte's Nelly Dean, Dickens' Inspector Bucket, Mrs. Cadwallader in "Middlemarch", and additional commentary on the work of Scott and Harding. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.