TY - BOOK ID - 77904317 TI - The conversational circle PY - 1996 SN - 0813159075 9780813159072 0813119901 9780813119908 0813185238 9780813185231 PB - Lexington University Press of Kentucky DB - UniCat KW - Families in literature. KW - Speech in literature. KW - Friendship in literature. KW - Social interaction in literature. KW - Oral communication in literature. KW - Domestic fiction, English KW - Literature and society KW - Conversation in literature. KW - English fiction KW - Family in literature KW - History and criticism. KW - History KW - Fiction KW - Sociology of literature KW - English literature KW - anno 1700-1799 UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77904317 AB - The Conversational Circle offers a model for exploring a range of novels that experiment with narrative patterns. It makes a compelling case that teleological approaches to novel history that privilege the conflict between the individual and society are, quite simply, ahistorical. Twentieth-century historians of the early novel, most prominently Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Terry Castle, have canonized fictions that portray the individual in sustained tension with the social environment. Such fictions privilege a strongly linear structure. Recent reexaminations of the canon, however, have r ER -