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The multiplot novel and the dynamics...

Benford, Criscillia Ann.

The multiplot novel and the dynamics of the Victorian social order.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The multiplot novel and the dynamics of the Victorian social order.
Author:	Benford, Criscillia Ann.
Description:	189 p.
Notes:	Adviser: Franco Moretti.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3395.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International65-09A.
Subject:	Literature, English.
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3145466
ISBN:	0496043692

The multiplot novel and the dynamics of the Victorian social order.
Benford, Criscillia Ann.

The multiplot novel and the dynamics of the Victorian social order. - 189 p.

Adviser: Franco Moretti.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2004.

"The Multiplot Novel and the Dynamics of the Victorian Social Order" is a historically-contextualized contribution to the field of formal narrative analysis. I argue that the use of multiple narrative enabled novelists to formalize the ambiguities of social status in a time when calls to electoral reform, industrialization, and urbanization helped to relax England's pre-industrial social hierarchy and Britons became increasingly invested in the idea of power of the individual---any individual---to "make something" of himself. Victorian multiplot novels register this social transformation by separating discrete lines of action along class lines, and weaving them together through characters that cross the threshold between plots. I categorize these characters into two new narratological categories: plot trespassers and connectors. Plot connectors are agents of order: they move across class and plot lines to explain the social order to other characters, punish violators, and heal characters on the brink of departing from life---and plot---through death. In contrast, plot trespassers make uninvited visits to other plots, bringing about Aristotelian reversals. The narrative disorder created by plot trespassing concretizes and functionalizes the potential for social disorder latent in the precariousness of social status. Plot connectors and plot trespassers enable authors to dramatize cross-class interaction and its effects, as well as abate the risk of structural fragmentation posed by multiple narrative. My interpretive framework---which emphasizes the emplacement of plots within a plot system, their dynamic interaction, and the historical motivations for their syntactic structures---allows me to rethink our understanding of the relationship between form and mimesis and offer new perspectives on such fundamental theoretical issues as the translation of axiological systems into literary form, the relationship of character psychology to plot structure, and the pressure exerted by a novel's formal construction upon interpretation. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the Victorian multiplot novel's comprehension of the dynamics of the social order emerges through a dialectic between formal coherence and conceptions of social cohesion.

ISBN: 0496043692Subjects--Topical Terms:

212435
Literature, English.

The multiplot novel and the dynamics of the Victorian social order.
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502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2004.
520 # $a "The Multiplot Novel and the Dynamics of the Victorian Social Order" is a historically-contextualized contribution to the field of formal narrative analysis. I argue that the use of multiple narrative enabled novelists to formalize the ambiguities of social status in a time when calls to electoral reform, industrialization, and urbanization helped to relax England's pre-industrial social hierarchy and Britons became increasingly invested in the idea of power of the individual---any individual---to "make something" of himself. Victorian multiplot novels register this social transformation by separating discrete lines of action along class lines, and weaving them together through characters that cross the threshold between plots. I categorize these characters into two new narratological categories: plot trespassers and connectors. Plot connectors are agents of order: they move across class and plot lines to explain the social order to other characters, punish violators, and heal characters on the brink of departing from life---and plot---through death. In contrast, plot trespassers make uninvited visits to other plots, bringing about Aristotelian reversals. The narrative disorder created by plot trespassing concretizes and functionalizes the potential for social disorder latent in the precariousness of social status. Plot connectors and plot trespassers enable authors to dramatize cross-class interaction and its effects, as well as abate the risk of structural fragmentation posed by multiple narrative. My interpretive framework---which emphasizes the emplacement of plots within a plot system, their dynamic interaction, and the historical motivations for their syntactic structures---allows me to rethink our understanding of the relationship between form and mimesis and offer new perspectives on such fundamental theoretical issues as the translation of axiological systems into literary form, the relationship of character psychology to plot structure, and the pressure exerted by a novel's formal construction upon interpretation. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the Victorian multiplot novel's comprehension of the dynamics of the social order emerges through a dialectic between formal coherence and conceptions of social cohesion.
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