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The epistolary form in twentieth-century fiction

Gubernatis, Catherine
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1184950116

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
In my dissertation, I argue the use of the epistolary form in twentieth-century fiction reflects the major principles of the modern and postmodern literary movements, separating epistolary practices in fiction from their real world counterparts. Letters and letter writing played an important role in the development of the English novel in the middle eighteenth century. A letter is traditionally understood to be a genuine depiction of what the writer is currently feeling, and when used in fiction, letters become a way to represent characters’ internal states and to present accounts of recent events. Thus letters in eighteenth-century fiction establish that language can clearly reveal the subjective experience. The modernists, however, believe that all knowledge, even subjective knowledge, is limited and after World War I, lose confidence in language’s ability to describe the modern era. They revive the epistolary genre and use letters in their works precisely to reject the conventions that had been founded in the eighteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the use of letters in fiction continues to evolve. Postmodern authors use the epistolary form to investigate the ways language complicates representations of the subjective experience and to explore the letter’s relationship to different states of being. The letter in fiction, then, can be adapted to express different theories about art and literature. Thus letters are used in twentieth-century literature not so much because they are a vital part of a media ecology, but because their relationship with actual media is dissolving. In addition, comparing the functions of letters in the eighteenth century and the functions of letters in the twentieth century demonstrate that using the letter in fiction automatically puts novels in conversation with texts from previous literary eras. The majority of epistolary studies have discussed the relationship between letters and literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. My study argues that despite their apparent anachronism, letters are a dynamic literary form that has contributed to the evolution of fiction over the last 100 years.
Sebastian Knowles (Advisor)
Literature, General
epistolary studies; letter; letters; modernism; postmodernism; fiction

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Gubernatis, C. (2007). The epistolary form in twentieth-century fiction [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1184950116

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Gubernatis, Catherine. The epistolary form in twentieth-century fiction. 2007. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1184950116.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Gubernatis, Catherine. "The epistolary form in twentieth-century fiction." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1184950116

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.