The nineteenth-century epistolary novel: Parodies and travesties of a genre.

摘要

The tremendous popularity of epistolary novels waned considerably during the early nineteenth century, yet writers continued to work with the letter format. This dissertation examines several letter-novels written between 1789 and 1850, and analyzes how authors parody common plot scenarios, characters, and epistolary conventions of their pre-revolutionary forebears. After the French Revolution, the aristocratic novel of epistolary commerce and mondanite no longer corresponds to a useful mode of behavior, thought, and social interaction. Parody and travesty permit their authors to reuse familiar material and anchor the novels in a recognizable heritage and, at the same time, distance themselves from the very material they are transforming as they extend the letter novel's possibilities.;In Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal parodies both epistolary conventions and Rousseau in Julien's seduction of Mathilde and Mme de Fervaques. The letter is also shown to be an unreliable and corrupt document in an equally corrupt society. George Sand's Jacques represents an alternative reading of La Nouvelle Heloise, exposing implausible aspects of Rousseau's novel and rewriting the tale of wifely adultery. Balzac's Le Lys dans la vallee features a feminized epistolary hero, illustrating parody through role reversal. In Poor Folk, Dostoevsky places aristocratic epistolary sentiments and language into the hands of a poor clerk, with heart-rending results as he attempts to win Varvara's heart and shows his love is as great as any aristocrat's. Lastly, Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall uses letters and diaries to rewrite prevailing notions of passive femininity and build a new vision of male-female relationships based upon equal partnership and mutual accommodation.