Phillips, Natalie (Author)
Stanford University
Physical Details: 310 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation offers a literary history of the mental state we now know as distraction. I argue that changing theories of focus in the Enlightenment transformed eighteenth-century models of mind and narrative. Traditionally described by early modern writers as a mark of sin, error, and madness, distraction was re-imagined in the Enlightenment as a valued cognitive faculty--a shift that I propose had powerful effects on contemporary literature. Focusing on the time period around Denis Diderot's radical redefinition of distraction as "an excellent quality of the understanding" in his Encyclopdie (1754), I bring together a constellation of works engaged with theories of attention between 1750 and 1820, including Samuel Johnson's Rambler (1750-52) and Idler (1758-60), Eliza Haywood's The History of Betsy Thoughtless (1751), Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67), and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813). I suggest that the friction between competing models of focus in the Enlightenment turned distraction into a generative literary trope, one that reshaped narrative techniques for crafting authorial persona, point-of-view, style, and characterization. Reading these works in terms of distraction, I maintain, complicates our traditional story of the novel's eighteenth-century genesis. It reveals not simply an attempt to represent middle-class readers, but an ongoing struggle to get their attention. There are as many kinds of distraction as there are kinds of focus. To appreciate this complexity, my study considers four types of distraction: wandering attention, lapses of concentration, scattered focus, and divided attention. My first chapter analyzes the conceit of "wandering attention" in Johnson's Rambler and Idler; it contends that his essays turn distraction into the central trait of an authorial persona intended to attract and reform inattentive readers Chapter Two explores the gendering of distraction in Betsy Thoughtless; I propose that creating a heroine prone to "lapses of concentration" inspired Haywood to develop new techniques to manage unreliable point of view. In Chapter Three, I move to distracted heroes and to Sterne's Tristram Shandy. I suggest that Sterne's attempt to translate "scattered attention" into a narrative rhythm lies behind the novel's innovative typography and modern style. I conclude my study with a reading of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, showing that her novels turn "divided attention" into a tool for building characters' psychological depth. Austen's fictions use distraction to convey the intricacy of a vibrant mind. As I explore the friction among Enlightenment theories of concentration, I blend the tools of narrative theory, literary history, and applied cognitive science to model a new method for analyzing literature in terms of attention--that of both characters and readers. This methodology allows my work to speak to literary critics, intellectual historians, sociologists of reading, and cognitive scientists alike, reminding them of the crucial role distraction's history plays in shaping our modern perspective on the life of the mind.
...MoreDescription “A literary history of the mental state we now know as distraction.” (from the abstract) Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. : doc. no. 3430507.
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