The revolution in action : servants in British fictions of the 1790s
Citation:
Sinéad Morrissey, 'The revolution in action : servants in British fictions of the 1790s', [thesis], Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of English, 2004, pp 227Download Item:
Abstract:
Taking its title from Napoleon's famous description of Figaro as "the Revolution in
action", the following thesis explores the depiction of servants in British fictions of the
1790s, and argues that both radical and conservative authors self-consciously
foregrounded provocative servant characters as symbols of revolutionary energy. In a
decade in which prose fiction was intensely politicised, servants in British prose fictions
assume obvious ideological significance in a way which distinguishes them from earlier
eighteenth-century servants, as well as from the servants that follow in the nineteenth
century. Such a reading differs substantially from the only other study of servants in
British prose fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bruce Robbins' The
Servant's Hand, which argues that literary servants are both always marginalised, and
always independent of their particular socio-political contexts.
Author: Morrissey, Sinéad
Advisor:
Douglas, AileenPublisher:
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of EnglishNote:
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Full text availableKeywords:
English, Ph.D., Ph.D. Trinity College DublinMetadata
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