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From novel to criticism: narrative knowing in the nineteenth century
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Sater, Maxwell. From novel to criticism: narrative knowing in the nineteenth century. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2v15-q249

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TitleFrom novel to criticism: narrative knowing in the nineteenth century
NameSater, Maxwell (author); Kurnick, David (chair); Kucich, John (internal member); Williams, Carolyn (internal member); Dames, Nicholas (outside member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2020
Other Date2020-10 (degree)
SubjectVictorian, Literatures in English
Extent1 online resource (iv, 243 pages)
DescriptionThis dissertation argues that cross-disciplinary discord between literary, philosophical, and scientific writers was central to the formal and aesthetic developments of the British and American novel in the nineteenth century and to the evolution of modern literary criticism. While most scholars of nineteenth-century literature and science work within the “one culture” thesis, emphasizing the shared questions, themes, and techniques among different genres of intellectual writing, my project deviates from these accounts by emphasizing the claims to intellectual priority made, in particular, by novelists. I argue that the realist novels of Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James advance a nonscientific epistemology I call, following Stanley Cavell, “ordinary.” These novels resist the scientific imperatives of definition and generalization and instead focus on the ways that knowledge is created and shared in ordinary life. I suggest that literary realism obviates the potential violence of knowledge relations by shifting the criteria for what it means to know someone or something away from conceptual certainty and towards social responsiveness. Ultimately, I argue that this epistemological framework, which originates in nineteenth-century realism, comes to define modern literary criticism.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2v15-q249
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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