The Soul of Reading: Digression and the Rise of the Novel

"The Soul of Reading" presents a new account of the rise of the realist novel in eighteenth-century Britain centered on realism's appropriation of the ancient rhetorical practice of digression. Critics have often noted that early realist novels are filled with digressions, but have typically seen these digressions as signs of the form's modernity. I argue that the early novel's digressiveness is better understood as an expression of its conservatism. The first chapter of the dissertation retraces the evolution of the theory of digression from antiquity to the eighteenth century, showing how a practice that had long been understood as a legitimate rhetorical technique was both naturalized and pathologized in the early modern period. The three subsequent chapters offer readings of seminal realist novels by Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, and Walter Scott. In each case, I argue that the early realist novel employs digression as a means of undermining contemporary efforts to comprehend and transform the world. "The Soul of Reading" thus challenges literary critical orthodoxy on two fronts. On the one hand, it revises the standard account of the rise of the realist novel as a triumph of the values of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. On the other hand, it encourages literary critics to reconsider our tendency to celebrate digression as a form of resistance to narrative and ideological closure.