The Origins of the English Marriage Plot
eBook - PDF

The Origins of the English Marriage Plot

Literature, Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Origins of the English Marriage Plot

Literature, Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century

About this book

Why did marriage become central to the English novel in the eighteenth century? As clandestine weddings and the unruly culture that surrounded them began to threaten power and property, questions about where and how to marry became urgent matters of public debate. In 1753, in an unprecedented and controversial use of state power, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke mandated Anglican church weddings as marriage's only legal form. Resistance to his Marriage Act would fuel a new kind of realist marriage plot in England and help to produce political radicalism as we know it. Focussing on how major authors from Samuel Richardson to Jane Austen made church weddings a lynchpin of their fiction, The Origins of the English Marriage Plot offers a truly innovative account of the rise of the novel by telling the story of the English marriage plot's engagement with the most compelling political and social questions of its time.

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Yes, you can access The Origins of the English Marriage Plot by Lisa O'Connell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title page
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright page
  5. Contents
  6. List of Illustrations
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Introduction Historicising the English Marriage Plot
  9. Chapter 1 Church, State and the Public Politics of Marriage
  10. Chapter 2 Clandestine Marriage, Commerce and the Theatre
  11. Chapter 3 The New Fiction: Samuel Richardson and the Anglican Wedding
  12. Chapter 4 The Patriot Marriage Plot: Fielding, Shebbeare and Goldsmith
  13. Chapter 5 Literary Marriage Plots: Burney, Austen and Gretna Green
  14. Afterword
  15. Notes
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index