Models of reading

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"Two predominant critical assumptions about Samuel Richardson - that he is a feminist and that his novels aim to exert a straightforward didactic influence on readers - are challenged by this comparative study of female exemplarity in Clarissa and several novels written in its wake, by Richardson, Frances Burney, and Choderlos de Lacios." "Martha J. Koehler undertakes detailed readings of Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison, Evelina, and Les Liaisons dangereuses in a theoretically and historically informed context, in order to investigate the ideologically charged terrain of models and modeling in eighteenth-century epistolary fiction. Deploying the concept of the "model" both as a person to be imitated (a paragon) and as a representation of narrative communication, she argues that Clarissa imposes on its readers a traditional view of women's inferiority, and frustrates the traditional ethical paradigm of imitating a model, in its depiction of a female paragon who is both a representative of and an exception to her gender." "Models of Reading will be of interest to Richardson, Burney, and Laclos scholars, as well as specialists in the history of the novel, the culture of sensibility, epistolary fiction, gender, and theories of reading. Koehler's arguments incorporate much recent criticism of eighteenth-century fiction, making this study a useful compendium even beyond the value of its own findings."--Jacket.