Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Autorentext

Jesse Molesworth is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2003 and served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University from 2006 8.

Klappentext

A study of the relationship between realism, probability and chance in eighteenth-century fiction.

Zusammenfassung
A study of the relationship between realism, probability and chance - including gambling and magic - in eighteenth-century fiction, from Defoe through Fielding to end-of-century Gothic.

Inhalt

Introduction: can the novel enlighten?; Part I. Chance, Plot, Magic: 1. Fortune's fools: the novel and the lottery fantasy; 2. Two predictions on the fate of gambling and probability theory; Part II. Epistemologies of the Eighteenth-Century Novel: 3. Defoe and the statistical (il)logic of the novel; 4. Narrative games in the novels of Henry Fielding; 5. Humean fictions: Amelia, Tristram Shandy, and the problem of induction; Part III. The Return of Coincidence: 6. Natural preternaturalism: the Gothic novel and the rise of Tarot cartomancy; Coda: Sade and the supermundane realm; Works cited; Index.