The Didactic Tradition: Reformed Heroines in Fanny Burney’s novels
| Thesis title in Czech: | Didaktická tradice: napravené hrdinky v románech Fanny Burney |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | The Didactic Tradition: Reformed Heroines in Fanny Burney’s novels |
| Key words: | Fanny Burney|anglický román|anglická literatura 18. století|tradice napravených hrdinek|autorky 18. a 19. století |
| English key words: | Fanny Burney|English novel|Eighteenth century English literature|reformed heroines tradition|18th and 19th century women writers |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2018/2019 |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK) |
| Supervisor: | PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept. |
| Date of registration: | 24.10.2018 |
| Date of assignment: | 24.10.2018 |
| Administrator's approval: | not processed yet |
| Confirmed by Study dept. on: | 29.10.2018 |
| Date and time of defence: | 05.09.2019 08:30 |
| Date of electronic submission: | 14.08.2019 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 05.09.2019 |
| Submitted/finalized: | committed by student and finalized |
| Opponents: | PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D. |
| Guidelines |
| Fanny Burney was an influential author of women’s literature in the late 18th century. She wrote novels which helped to constitute the didactic tradition of what Jane Spencer called reformed heroines, a tradition gaining prominence at the time. The major characters of Fanny Burney’s novels mostly follow a similar formula when it comes to their background, financial situation and moral virtue. This is reflected in the plots that always show the heroines facing various misunderstandings and embarrassments which serve as tests forcing them to evolve with the help of more experienced characters who offer sound advice. This thesis focuses on the maturing process of the heroines in the novels: Evelina, Or, The History of Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778), Cecilia, Or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782) and Camilla, Or, a Picture of Youth (1796). In the first part I will analyse Evelina regarding the heroine’s family situation, the influence of mentor characters and her attitude towards moral and monetary values. Then I will proceed to compare this novel’s main concerns identified above with the ways these are approached in the other two texts. And in the last part of the thesis I will be commenting on the nature and implications of these moral messages presented in Burney’s conduct book guides that at the time were approved of as ‘‘a study for youth. ’’ |
| References |
| Cutting-Gray, Joanne. ‘‘Writing Innocence: Fanny Burney's Evelina.’’ Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 9.1 (1990): 43-57. Gonda, Caroline. Reading Daughters’ Fictions 1799-1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Gray, Vivien. Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity. New York: Routlege, 1990. Hammond, Brean and Ragan, Shaun. Making the Novel: Fiction and Society in Britain, 1660-1789. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Harman, Claire. Fanny Burney a Biography. London: Flamingo, 2001. Haslett, Moyra. Pope to Burney, 1714-1771: Scriblerians to Bluestockings. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Johnson, Claudia S. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s-Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Mews, Hazel. Frail Vessels Woman’s Role in Women’s Novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot. Bristol: The Anthlone Press, 1969. Perry, Ruth. Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture 1748-1818. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Richetti, John. The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Sabor, Peter. Cambridge Companion to Frances Burney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Skinner, John. An Introduction to Eighteenth-century Fiction: Raising the Novel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Spender, Dale. Mothers of the Novel. London: Pandora, 1986. Steaves, Susan. A literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain 1660-1789. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Todd, Jane. The Sign of Angelica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800. London: Virgo Press, 1989. |