Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Realism,
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Molesworth, Jesse, PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press, The rise ong>andong> popular awareness of the science of probability in the eighteenth century was accompanied by an equally great interest in the anti-probable: lotteries, tarot readings, ong>andong> gambling. In this original study, Jesse Molesworth analyses the relationship between realism, probability ong>andong> chance in eighteenth-century fiction. In a variety of readings, both literary ong>andong> cultural, he investigates works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding ong>andong> Laurence Sterne, in the context of the rise of lottery addiction, Hoyle's whist, ong>andong> tarot cartomancy. Both a reassessment of the early development of the novel ong>andong> a contribution to recent work on realism ong>andong> fiction, this book suggests connections between narrative ong>andong> mathematics that reveal a darker, more transgressive, side to the novel. Rather than a rational expression of Enlightenment truths, the novel reaches out to older, more superstitious views as it tries to combine the attractions of chance with the consolations of reason.