Nowka, Scott Aaron (Author)
University of Iowa
Gidal, Eric
Edition Details: Advisor: Gidal, Eric
Physical Details: 200 pp.
Language: English
'Character Matters: Enlightenment Materialism and the Novel' reveals the troubling influence of Enlightenment science on the conception and representation of the human person via literary characterization in eighteenth- century Britain. I argue that mounting scientific evidence for the materialist worldview commonly accepted in the sciences today---that matter is the only reality---called into question the humanist assumptions of both the Anglican establishment and the common reader, and that authors responded to materialism by embracing this possibility, recoiling from it, or demonstrating its implications with pointed ambivalence. As a result, the characters that they produced were unique to the period. Some works, such as Laurence Sterne's _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_ (1760-67), created characters that behaved like mechanical objects. Sterne's characters, particularly Uncle Toby, seem almost incapable of thinking beyond the mechanical operation of the associations of their ideas. In Sterne's case, this portrayal of materialist characters is meant to satirize such thinking, but other characters, such as the subject of David Hartley's philosophical work _Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations_ (1749) or the protagonist of Mary Hays's _Memoirs of Emma Courtney_ (1796) present materialism and mechanism as a logical guarantee of personal salvation and, in Hays's case, political autonomy. Others works replaced their human protagonists altogether with 'object narrators,' creating novels that recount the adventures had by material objects like corkscrews, coins, and slippers as they circulate through society. By imaginatively characterizing persons in this way, the novels and other writings of the period called attention to the ethical and theological problems inherent in materialist thinking, as well as the issues of agency and personal responsibility that they entailed. Through a historical examination of this aspect of Enlightenment science, my project provides a new window into one of the formal concerns of the writing of the day, as well as a broader understanding of the types of humanity conceivable in eighteenth-century Britain.
...MoreDescription Includes an analysis of the work of philosopher David Hartley. Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/07 (2007): 2593. UMI pub. no. 3225657.
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