Samuel Richardson: appunti in inglese

INGLESE ? THE BOURGEOIS NOVEL AND SAMUEL RICHARDSON INGLESE ? THE BOURGEOIS NOVEL AND SAMUEL RICHARDSON THE BOURGEOIS NOVEL Richardson was the originator of the so - called bourgeois novels or novels of manners. The novels are based on a single story, The novels are set in a domestic environment, usually confined to interiors, Richardson is the first writer to concentrate on the new middle classes, with their private lives, family problems and repressed desires, There is plenty of realism, All the novels reveals Richardson's unique psychological insight into human behaviour and strong empathy with the female sex. His own characters are capable of emotional development, His novels are all love stories, They are all written in epistolary form, They all share moralizing purpose. SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689 - 1761) Samuel Richardson was born in Derbyshire. After setting up a successful printing business of his own, he become in turn Printer of the Journal of the House of Commons. He spent all his working life in London, where he died. Richardson took to novel - writing almost by accident. In 1739 two printers asked him to compile a little volume of model letters to be used by semi - educated country people and could teach them “how to think and act justly and prudently in the common Concerns of Human Life”. The collection was also to contain a number of letters intended for girls “who were obliged to go out to service”. Richardson had natural talent for letter - writing and he accepted the proposal but soon realized that the theme of certain of the letters was material for a complete novel. He temporarily set aside the work he had been commissioned to write. In two months he then produces the first two volumes of Pamela, the first of his three novels. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded ? in four volumes, the novel narrates, in the epistolary form, how Pamela defends herself from the advances of her mistress's son, Mr. B, who, after many unsuccessful attempts to seduce her, finally falls in love with her and marries her. A second part was added, showing Pamela s a happy and virtuous wife. Clarissa Harlowe ? in seven volumes. Unlike Pamela virtue here is persecuted and finally defeated. The heroine, Clarissa, is in fact abducted and raped, and dies after grief and shame. Sir Charles Grandison ? in seven volumes. Is the story of a man intended as a model of manly virtues. Richardson's novels had a precise purpose: they intended to edify and amuse. They moral treatises in the form of love stories. Nothing like this had ever been written before, with such wealth of passions, subjectivism and self - revelation. Middle - class people at once understood the importance of this new type of fiction, in which they found “a means of satisfying their suppressed desires. Richardson's works were intended for ”them and showed them how to obtain spiritual and material success. He contrasted the honest bourgeoisie with the corrupt aristocracy,