Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Realism, Probability, Magic

A study of the relationship between realism, probability and chance in eighteenth-century fiction.

Jesse Molesworth (Author)

9781107425583, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 July 2014

286 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

The rise and popular awareness of the science of probability in the eighteenth century was accompanied by an equally great interest in the anti-probable: lotteries, tarot readings, and gambling. In this study, Jesse Molesworth analyses the relationship between realism, probability and chance in eighteenth-century fiction. In a variety of readings, both literary and cultural, he investigates works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, in the context of the rise of lottery addiction, Hoyle's whist, and tarot cartomancy. Both a reassessment of the early development of the novel and a contribution to recent work on realism and fiction, this book suggests connections between narrative and mathematics that reveal a darker, more transgressive, side to the novel. Rather than a rational expression of Enlightenment truths, the novel reaches out to older, more superstitious views as it tries to combine the attractions of chance with the consolations of reason.

Introduction: can the novel enlighten?
Part I. Chance, Plot, Magic: 1. Fortune's fools: the novel and the lottery fantasy
2. Two predictions on the fate of gambling and probability theory
Part II. Epistemologies of the Eighteenth-Century Novel: 3. Defoe and the statistical (il)logic of the novel
4. Narrative games in the novels of Henry Fielding
5. Humean fictions: Amelia, Tristram Shandy, and the problem of induction
Part III. The Return of Coincidence: 6. Natural preternaturalism: the Gothic novel and the rise of Tarot cartomancy
Coda: Sade and the supermundane realm
Works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]