The novel stage narrative form from the Restoration to Jane Austen Frank, Marcie creator author. text bibliography Criticism, interpretation, etc. pau 2020 monographic eng print 218 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. "The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen traces the novel's relation to the theater over the course of the long eighteenth century, arguing that the familiar account of the novel as 'new' and distinct from other literary genres risks distorting a true reckoning of the form by failing to engage with the borrowings and departures from other more familiar genres, particularly drama. The Novel Stage traces the migration of tragicomedy, the comedy of manners, and melodrama from the stage to the novel. These genres were shared across print and performance, media that were not construed as opposites in a world in which individual silent reading took place beside playgoing, play-reading, amateur theatricals, and sociable reading aloud. The book thus expands an overly narrow conception of the novel as the genre of realism or domesticity whose highest achievement is its representation of characters' mental lives by describing the influence of the stage and its genres. Beginning in the later 1600s with Aphra Behn, The Novel Stage concludes with a chapter on some novelists of the Romantic period and a coda about Victorian novels. The Novel Stage's account of the novel provides an enriched, because more specific, sense of its formal accomplishments that drew on this ensemble of cultural forms and turns that lens back onto drama"-- Genre, media, and the theory of the novel -- The reform of the Rake from Rochester to Inchbald -- Performing reading in Richardson and Fielding -- The promise of embarrassment : Frances Burney's Theater of shame -- Melodrama in Inchbald and Austen -- Coda : the melodramatic address. Marcie Frank. Includes bibliographical references and index. English literature 18th century History and criticism Theory, etc English drama 18th century History and criticism Theory, etc LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama English literature Theory, etc 1700-1799 fast PR441 .F73 2020 822/.40939 Transits (Bucknell University) 9781684481682 1684481686 9781684481675 1684481678 9781684481712 9781684481699 2019016869 pda,print LBSOR/DLC 190615 20250318223215.2 in00004157397 eng