Eighteenth Century Fiction publishes articles in both Englishand French on all aspects of imaginative prose in the period 1700–1800,but will also examine papers on late 17th-century or early 19th-centuryfiction, particularly when the works are discussed in connection withthe eighteenth century.
Vol. 21, no1 (automne 2008) - Death / La Mort
Peter Walmsley
"Live to Die, Die to Live": An Introduction
Two sets of images illuminate this special issue of Eighteenth Century Fiction, "Death/La Mort." Marble putti grace the front and back covers: one, a girl, gazes calmly at a skull; the other, a boy, weeps as he holds an hourglass. Probably carved between 1680 and 1720 by a Dutch or English craftsman, these putti were intended to decorate a funeral monument in a church or a family burial chapel, and perhaps did at some point. Though the carvings are gorgeously realized, they are nonetheless conventional: putti holding the emblems of death commonly adorned more lavish baroque tombs.1 Products of a pan-European aristocratic aesthetic, they were designed to convey the wealth and power of a great family. The second set of images, appearing between the articles of this issue, could hardly... (Extrait)
ARTICLES
Holly Faith Nelson
Sharon Alker
Memory, Monuments, and Melancholic Genius in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo
Margaret Cavendish's inclination to celebrate female participation in martial affairs in her dramatic works has received a substantial amount of critical attention. The indulgent wish fulfilment represented by the remarkable victories of Lady Victoria and her female army in Bell in Campo, and the astonishing battle achievements of Lady Orphant (Affectionata) in Love's Adventures, have unsurprisingly been the focus of that attention. While the disruption and horror of the civil war overturned gender hierarchies, allowing and even requiring women to assume traditionally masculine roles, few writers depict female... (Extrait)
Katherine Ellison
James Boswell's Revisions of Death as "The Hypochondriack" and in His London Journals
James Boswell learns of the deaths of his son, his mother, and his mentor Samuel Johnson by post. Perhaps it is fitting that a writer who so painstakingly records the significant moments of his life in writing reads about, rather than witnesses, the deaths of those closest to him. Boswell records in detail in his journals his experiences with the passing of his dearest family and friends, as well as with the executions of Paul Lewis, Mr Gibson, and John Reid. Boswell uses the revision process, as demonstrated most clearly in his rewritings of execution scenes, as a means of coping with death and of countering his admitted religious inconstancy... (Extrait)
Laurence Mall
Le Mourir dans la vie et la mort dans la ville: le Tableau de Paris (1781–89) de L.S. Mercier
Par la forme radicalement ouverte, non chronologique et non systématique de son énorme Tableau de Paris (1781- 89),1 Mercier à la veille de la Révolution élabore un discours sur la mort qui rompt autant avec le discours romanesque qu'avec le discours philosophique. Dans le roman du xviiie siècle à structure biographique, la mort d'un personnage principal (Manon, Julie, Madame de Tourvel et tant d'autres) immanquablement servira de point d'orgue à une vie d'exception, étoffera ou approfondira une leçon morale, fera résonner une fatalité. C'est que la fiction livre une chronique ambigüe de la mort, à la fois reflet du... (Extrait)
Sonja Boon
Last Rites, Last Rights: Corporeal Abjection as Autobiographical Performance in Suzanne Curchod Necker's Des inhumations precipitées (1790)
By all accounts, Suzanne Curchod Necker (1737-94) was, despite her Swiss background and modest upbringing, a successful and powerful woman within the eighteenth-century French elite.1 As a salonni�re, she regularly welcomed some of the leading minds of the Enlightenment into her home, among them Buffon, Diderot, Grimm, Marmontel, Morellet, Suard, and Thomas. She was active on the political stage as a woman engaged in public charity through her work in prison and hospital reform.2 Finally, she was... (Extrait)
Angela Monsam
Biography as Autopsy in William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"
To examine the cause of life, we must first have recourse to death. --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein1 When Mary Wollstonecraft died, shortly after giving birth to a baby girl named Mary, Wollstonecraft's husband William Godwin marked her grave with a stone and planted two willows over it. In 1809, when Mary Godwin was about twelve years old, her father published An Essay on Sepulchres; or, A Proposal for Erecting Some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead in All Ages on the Spot Where Their Remains Have Been Interred. Years later, during their courtship, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley would, from time to time, go to... (Extrait)
Paul Pelckmans
"La mort justifie toujours les âmes sensibles": à propos de Delphine
Selon une très ancienne tradition (qui transcrit peut-être une expérience tout aussi ancienne, que nos morts comateuses nous ont fait quelque peu oublier), l'heure vraiment dernière serait souvent précédée d'un regain ultime. Germaine de Staël affirme à son tour que «la nature donne toujours [...] un instant de mieux avant la mort; c'est un dernier recueillement de toutes les forces, c'est l'heure de la prière ou des adieux». La juxtaposition des deux termes -- prière ou adieux -- suggère certain équilibre des soucis eschatologique et relationnel, que la romancière, qui n'exprime aucune préférence pour l'un des deux registres, estimerait pareillement respectables. Elle s'écarte ainsi d'un de ses grands... (Extrait)
Katharine Kittredge
A Long-Forgotten Sorrow: The Mourning Journal of Melesina Trench
In June 1806, Melesina Trench (1768-1827), an Anglo-Irish poet1 detained in Orl�ans, France, as an "enemy national" by Napoleon, began to write in a new journal: "Frederick Trench expired at a quarter before eight O clock in the evening, June the seventh, 1806 aged two years, eight months and five days" (see figure 1).2 Over the next two years, Trench used her "Mourning Journal" to record her memories of her son, and to cope with her feelings of guilt and sorrow at his loss. Upon reading this diary for the first time in July 2002, I was struck by its sheer power as an artifact of the past. Although I had read many accounts of the deaths of children in early modern times, none were as raw and as emotionally engaging as... (Extrait)