Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction by Eric Rothstein reconceives the “rules” of the novel not as prescriptive poetics but as interacting systems—of narrative order and epistemological inquiry—shared by five famously unlike works: Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, Humphry Clinker, Amelia, and Caleb Williams. Rejecting eighteenth-century critics’ elusive search for universal principles, Rothstein demonstrates how techniques such as analogy, modification, surrogacy, and ...