English Novel", DIGIT.EN.S (The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century)
Résumé
This entry demonstrates how some of the very first novelists contributed, individually and collectively, whether consciously or inadvertently, to the rise of the new literary form while being driven by a spirit of opposition, contradiction and emulation seemingly hardly suited to foster the cooperative and collaborative environment which the development of a common literary project requires. Based on intertextual connections and apparent dialogical relationships between texts written by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Eliza Haywood, the analysis will suggest a reading of the interactions between authors as a form of literary unsociability which contributed to the development of the novel.