The epistolary novel2003

"The epistolary novel is a form which has been neglected in most accounts of the stylistic development of the novel. This book argues that the way that the eighteenth-century epistolary novel represented consciousness had a significant influence on the later novel." "The letters studied here reveal complex tensions within the divided minds of their writers. The close stylistic analysis presented in this study suggests that the epistolary novel can probe individual psychology in sophisticated depth." "Critics have drawn a distinction between the self at the time of writing and the self at the time at which events or emotions were experienced. This book demonstrates that the tensions within consciousness are the result of a continual interaction between the two selves of the letter-writer....