Challenging the view that Samuel Richardson's eighteenth-century epistolary novel Clarissa is a shapeless sequence of letters, this book argues that the novel has an action structure consisting of five act-like movements that emerge from the round robin transfer of narrative dominance: from the interiorizing drama enacted on the epistolary stage first by Clarissa's, then by Lovelace's self-reflections on just-past events, to Belford's more conventionally novelistic other-reflective narrative that ends the history. This book contrasts Clarissa's use of soliloquy to achieve self-understanding with Lovelace's employment of dramatic monologue to enable self-deception. Finally, Miss Howe's and Belford's performances in epistolary friendship are evaluated.

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The Author: Currently an Emeritus Professor of English at California State University Chico, Victor J. Lams received his Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. Dr. Lams has published articles on Milton, Keats, and eighteenth-century periodical literature. His recent book Anger, Guilt, and the Psychology of the Self in 'Clarissa' (Peter Lang, 1999) is essential companion volume to Clarissa's Narrators.