This method of writing to you from time to time, without any hopes of an answer, affords me, I own, some ease and satisfaction in the midst of my disquiet, as it in some degree lightens the burthen of affliction; but it is at best a very imperfect enjoyment of friendship, because it admits [...]
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Who is Matthew Bramble, and why do I love him so? Briefly, he is a gouty, middle-aged Welsh country gentleman. He complains all the time: of being an invalid, of how awful everyone is, of the way the world is going to ruin because of the mixing of the classes, of the degeneracy of [...] The Expedition of Humphry Clinker has yet another variation on the epistolary structure. Matthew Bramble, Welsh country gentleman, goes on a tour of Great Britain with his old maid sister Tabitha and their niece and nephew. These four, along with Tabitha’s maid Win Jenkins, each write to a single confidant during the course of [...] The more astute among my readers may have noticed something a bit funny going on in the past several posts—in writing about The History of Emily Montague, I have hardly mentioned Emily Montague. It’s not that I have anything against her; she’s a perfectly lovely heroine. Beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, sympathetic: everything Colonel Rivers could [...] The History of Emily Montague is set at a very particular time in Canadian history. Colonel Rivers’s opening letter is dated April 10, 1766, just three years after the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War and two years after the Quebec Act allowed Roman Catholics to again participate in the civil government [...] Unsurprisingly for a novel concerned with courtship and marriage and structured as a series of notes among friends, the letters in The History of Emily Montague concern themselves largely with the nature of friendship and love and what makes an ideal matrimonial alliance. Both the men and women of the novel focus on these [...] The History of Emily Montague is probably one of the less “serious” epistolary novels I’m reading, and I wasn’t expecting a lot from it. While those expectations were largely confirmed, the reading of it was extremely enjoyable and there were really an awful lot of things I liked. Written in 1769, this is mostly [...] In addition to a couple of Anti-Pamelas which came out shortly after Richardson’s work, Shamela appeared, “in which, the many notorious Falshoods and Misreprsentations of a Book called Pamela, Are exposed and refuted; and all the matchless Arts of that young Politician, set in a true and just Light.” Henry Fielding, the generally accepted [...] I wasn’t going to read the letters of Abelard and Heloïse originally, because I was going to stick to fictional letters. But then I came across Forbidden Love: from the letters of Abelard and Heloïse, an installment of the Penguin Great Loves series. I sort of hate reading excerpts from things but I am [...] So, on to the form—the reason for all this, anyway. I had, of course, read plenty of epistolary novels before starting this project, but I think I’d always taken for granted something that’s actually a little weird when you think about it. Not always, but often, the letters (and other documents) that make up [...] |
My Personal Canon (ongoing project) |
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