The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen
by Marcie Frank
Bucknell University Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-1-68448-168-2 | Paper: 978-1-68448-167-5 | eISBN: 978-1-68448-170-5 Library of Congress Classification PR441.F73 2020 Dewey Decimal Classification 822.40939
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Marcie Frank’s study traces the migration of tragicomedy, the comedy of manners, and melodrama from the stage to the novel, offering a dramatic new approach to the history of the English novel that examines how the collaboration of genres contributed to the novel’s narrative form and to the modern organization of literature. Drawing on media theory and focusing on the less-examined narrative contributions of such authors as Aphra Behn, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Inchbald, alongside those of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Jane Austen, The Novel Stage tells the story of the novel as it was shaped by the stage.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
MARCIE FRANK is a professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism from Dryden to Manley and How to be an Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal, and co-editor with Jonathan Goldberg and Karen Newman of This Distracted Globe: Worldmaking in Early Modern Literature.
REVIEWS
"An important and long-overdue consideration of the relationship between the theater and the novel in the long 18th century, The Novel Stage treats major Restoration and 18th-century dramatic forms—tragicomedy, comedy of manners, and melodrama—as they abandon the stage to take up residence in prose fiction. Essential."
— Choice
"Frank’s emphasis on generic and media fluidity and interrogation of fixed mindsets around them are, to use one of the words she unpacks in Burney’s novels, provocative; I can certainly see why The Novel Stage was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title....Frank’s work is excellent at pointing towards new, interdisciplinary approaches to important discussions of genre and form."
— Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface: The Novel Stage
Chapter 1: Genre, Media, and the Theory of the Novel
Chapter 2: The Reform of the Rake from Rochester to Inchbald
Chapter 3: Performing Reading in Richardson and Fielding
Chapter 4: The Promise of Embarrassment: Frances Burney’s Theater of Shame
The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen
by Marcie Frank
Bucknell University Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-1-68448-168-2 Paper: 978-1-68448-167-5 eISBN: 978-1-68448-170-5
2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Marcie Frank’s study traces the migration of tragicomedy, the comedy of manners, and melodrama from the stage to the novel, offering a dramatic new approach to the history of the English novel that examines how the collaboration of genres contributed to the novel’s narrative form and to the modern organization of literature. Drawing on media theory and focusing on the less-examined narrative contributions of such authors as Aphra Behn, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Inchbald, alongside those of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Jane Austen, The Novel Stage tells the story of the novel as it was shaped by the stage.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
MARCIE FRANK is a professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism from Dryden to Manley and How to be an Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal, and co-editor with Jonathan Goldberg and Karen Newman of This Distracted Globe: Worldmaking in Early Modern Literature.
REVIEWS
"An important and long-overdue consideration of the relationship between the theater and the novel in the long 18th century, The Novel Stage treats major Restoration and 18th-century dramatic forms—tragicomedy, comedy of manners, and melodrama—as they abandon the stage to take up residence in prose fiction. Essential."
— Choice
"Frank’s emphasis on generic and media fluidity and interrogation of fixed mindsets around them are, to use one of the words she unpacks in Burney’s novels, provocative; I can certainly see why The Novel Stage was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title....Frank’s work is excellent at pointing towards new, interdisciplinary approaches to important discussions of genre and form."
— Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface: The Novel Stage
Chapter 1: Genre, Media, and the Theory of the Novel
Chapter 2: The Reform of the Rake from Rochester to Inchbald
Chapter 3: Performing Reading in Richardson and Fielding
Chapter 4: The Promise of Embarrassment: Frances Burney’s Theater of Shame
Chapter 5: Melodrama in Inchbald and Austen
Coda: The Melodramatic Address
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC