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Risk and the English Novel : From Defoe to McEwan / Julia Hoydis.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series ; 66Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2019]Copyright date: ©2019Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 666 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110614862
  • 9783110615562
  • 9783110615418
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 823.009353 23/ger
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Risk Theory and Narrative Fiction – An Interdisciplinary Overview -- Part I. Survival Against the Odds: The Rise of Risk in the 18th‐century Novel -- 1. Calculating a New View of Life -- 2. Defoe and his Protagonists at Large in the Risk Society -- 3. Swift, Smollett, Sterne, and Walpole: Fears of Masculinity and Parodies of Calculation -- 4. Picturing Female Youth at Risk: Camilla -- Part II. Out of the Ordinary: The Gamble of Life in the 19th‐century Novel -- 5. Old and New Concerns -- 6. Precariousness, Accidents, and Divisions -- 7. Epic Tales of Ambition and Speculation -- 8. The Dangers of Human Nature and the Struggle Between the Sexes -- Part III. Crisis and Contingency: Threats to Humanity in the 20th- and 21st-century Novel -- 9. A Sense of Endings -- 10. Gendered Routines of Risk-Taking -- 11. Running Out of Time -- 12. Domestic (In)securities -- Epilogue -- Works Cited -- Subject Index -- Index of Persons
Summary: Taking the cue from the currency of risk in popular and interdisciplinary academic discourse, this book explores the development of the English novel in relation to the emergence and institutionalization of risk, from its origins in probability theory in the late seventeenth century to the global ‘risk society’ in the twenty-first century. Focussing on 29 novels from Defoe to McEwan, this book argues for the contemporaneity of the rise of risk and the novel and suggests that there is much to gain from reading the risk society from a diachronic, literary-cultural perspective. Tracing changes and continuities, the fictional case studies reveal the human preoccupation with safety and control of the future. They show the struggle with uncertainties and the construction of individual or collective ‘logics’ of risk, which oscillate between rational calculation and emotion, helplessness and denial, and an enabling or destructive sense of adventure and danger. Advancing the study of risk in fiction beyond the confinement to dystopian disaster narratives, this book shows how topical notions, such as chance and probability, uncertainty and responsibility, fears of decline and transgression, all cluster around risk.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9783110615418

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Risk Theory and Narrative Fiction – An Interdisciplinary Overview -- Part I. Survival Against the Odds: The Rise of Risk in the 18th‐century Novel -- 1. Calculating a New View of Life -- 2. Defoe and his Protagonists at Large in the Risk Society -- 3. Swift, Smollett, Sterne, and Walpole: Fears of Masculinity and Parodies of Calculation -- 4. Picturing Female Youth at Risk: Camilla -- Part II. Out of the Ordinary: The Gamble of Life in the 19th‐century Novel -- 5. Old and New Concerns -- 6. Precariousness, Accidents, and Divisions -- 7. Epic Tales of Ambition and Speculation -- 8. The Dangers of Human Nature and the Struggle Between the Sexes -- Part III. Crisis and Contingency: Threats to Humanity in the 20th- and 21st-century Novel -- 9. A Sense of Endings -- 10. Gendered Routines of Risk-Taking -- 11. Running Out of Time -- 12. Domestic (In)securities -- Epilogue -- Works Cited -- Subject Index -- Index of Persons

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Taking the cue from the currency of risk in popular and interdisciplinary academic discourse, this book explores the development of the English novel in relation to the emergence and institutionalization of risk, from its origins in probability theory in the late seventeenth century to the global ‘risk society’ in the twenty-first century. Focussing on 29 novels from Defoe to McEwan, this book argues for the contemporaneity of the rise of risk and the novel and suggests that there is much to gain from reading the risk society from a diachronic, literary-cultural perspective. Tracing changes and continuities, the fictional case studies reveal the human preoccupation with safety and control of the future. They show the struggle with uncertainties and the construction of individual or collective ‘logics’ of risk, which oscillate between rational calculation and emotion, helplessness and denial, and an enabling or destructive sense of adventure and danger. Advancing the study of risk in fiction beyond the confinement to dystopian disaster narratives, this book shows how topical notions, such as chance and probability, uncertainty and responsibility, fears of decline and transgression, all cluster around risk.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Jun 2024)