Eavesdropping in the novel from Austen to Proust
By: Ann Gaylin
Series: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture -- 37
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Cambridge, U.K; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
Subjects: Austen, Jane, -- 1775-1817 -- Views on eavesdropping; Collins, Wilkie, -- 1824-1889 -- Views on eavesdropping; Balzac, Honoré de, -- 1799-1850 -- Views on eavesdropping; Proust, Marcel, -- 1871-1922 -- Views on eavesdropping; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Eavesdropping in literature; Literature, Comparative -- English and French; Literature, Comparative -- French and English; French fiction -- History and criticism
Description: "Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust investigates human curiosity and its representation in eavesdropping scenes in nineteenth-century English and French novels. Ann Gaylin argues that eavesdropping dramatizes a primal human urge to know, and offers a paradigm of narrative transmission and reception of information among characters, narrators, and readers. Gaylin sheds light on the social and psychological effects of the nineteenth-century rise of information technology and accelerated flow of information, as manifested in the anxieties about - and delight in - displays of private life and its secrets. Analyzing eavesdropping in Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Collins, and Proust, she demonstrates the flexibility of the scene to produce narrative complication or resolution, to foreground questions of gender and narrative agency, and to place the debate of privacy and publicity within the literal and metaphoric spaces of the nineteenth-century novel. This innovative study will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century English and European literature."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 222-236) and index