John Bende
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226761473
- eISBN:
- 9780226761466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226761466.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter argues that the British novelists of the early eighteenth century adopted three elements of natural philosophy in fashioning their narratives: surrogate witnessing, the contrived ...
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This chapter argues that the British novelists of the early eighteenth century adopted three elements of natural philosophy in fashioning their narratives: surrogate witnessing, the contrived experiment, and the induction-based reasoning that could translate the findings of a single experiment into truths of general validity. It shows how early novelists fashioned printed texts into experiments that mediated different kinds of knowledge as a means of mediating the fictional and the real. The tools described both confer experience to the fictional characters and advance the judgment of both characters and readers.Less
This chapter argues that the British novelists of the early eighteenth century adopted three elements of natural philosophy in fashioning their narratives: surrogate witnessing, the contrived experiment, and the induction-based reasoning that could translate the findings of a single experiment into truths of general validity. It shows how early novelists fashioned printed texts into experiments that mediated different kinds of knowledge as a means of mediating the fictional and the real. The tools described both confer experience to the fictional characters and advance the judgment of both characters and readers.
