Deidre Lynch - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Deidre Lynch

Research paper thumbnail of Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. By G. Gabrielle Starr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp

Modern Language Quarterly, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning

Studies in Romanticism, 2003

... overcharged." The issues crit-ics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mi... more ... overcharged." The issues crit-ics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mimesis were issues of discursive economy. ... With the beginnings of the late eighteenth century's "affective revolution" and the advent of new linkages between novel reading, moral training, and ...

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction—Reading Spaces

PMLA, 2019

Reading Spaces evelyne ender and deidre shauna lynch EVELYNE ENDER is visiting professor in the D... more Reading Spaces evelyne ender and deidre shauna lynch EVELYNE ENDER is visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. She is finishing a book provisionally titled "Handwriting: An Inner History" and preparing a volume of essays on the value of literature in the medical humanities. Her essay "Jean Starobinski's Resistance to Theory-Le Regard de l'Absent" will appear in The Structuralist Controversy: De Baltimore 1966 à Aujourd'hui, a special issue of MLN forthcoming in 2019.

Research paper thumbnail of Paper Slips: Album, Archiving, Accident

Studies in Romanticism, 2018

. a quilt of patchwork consists of various miscellaneous pieces of different hues and qualities, ... more . a quilt of patchwork consists of various miscellaneous pieces of different hues and qualities, but jointly combining to make a pleasing and useful whole ... in the formation of the Album there is much wider scope for the Mind-a more intellectual occupation; whilst it keeps up a constant and rational excitement during its progress, it be comes a repository for the most endearing sentiments of friendship and affection.-John Britton, "An Album," prose paragraph written into the Mrs. Anna Birkbeck Album, ca. 1841 A sort of drive compels us to take the Book apart, to make it into a piece of lace.-Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel T he moment the eponymous narrator of "the adventures of an Album" launches its first-person memoir it is already on the defensive. Appearing in 1831 in the annual The Comic Offering; or Ladies' Melange of Literary Mirth, this tale has lines from Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for its epigraph: "'Tis pleasant sure to see oneself in print, / A book's a book although there's nothing in't." The first words this narrator addresses to its readers involve this "impertinent" couplet: "half a hundred persons of my acquaintance" will doubtless recall it, the narrator predicts, when they learn that a "poor Album (with no ideas of my own, and de pending for existence on the genius of others)" intends to write its own memoirs: "But this threadbare quotation is totally inapplicable to me: for al though I am a Book, yet it is unjust to say 'there's nothing in it', when so many of my pages are filled with charming poetry and unrivalled paintmgs. 1

Research paper thumbnail of PART 1. Choosing an Author as You Choose a Friend

Research paper thumbnail of PART 4. Dead Poets Societies

Research paper thumbnail of PART 3. English Literature for Everyday Use

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction: At Home in English

Research paper thumbnail of PART 2. Possessive Love

Research paper thumbnail of Gothic Fiction and “Belief in Every kind of Prodigy”

Research paper thumbnail of 5. Canon Love in Gothic Libraries

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Keeping Faith with Literature

Modern Language Quarterly, Dec 1, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 2007

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth ... more An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.

Research paper thumbnail of Sequels Deidre

Research paper thumbnail of Walter Scott's Loose Leaves: Books, Scraps, and Dispersive Reading

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Nov 1, 2022

Novel studies and book history alike emphasize the significance of Walter Scott's creation of... more Novel studies and book history alike emphasize the significance of Walter Scott's creation of his Magnum Opus edition (1829–33): a repossession, on behalf of a newly individuated author and between the covers of a uniformly manufactured edition, of publications that had previously appeared as the works of sundry authorial eidolons. For a nineteenth-century culture of collected editions, this act of rebinding represented a foundational moment. But Scott's novels also figured prominently within a robust tradition of commonplacing and scrapbooking in which books were understood as things that came apart, literally and figuratively, as well as things that came together. Nineteenth-century readers were keen to cut up, recontextualize, and reboot Scott's printed works inside their own homemade manuscript volumes. Guided by their practices, we are able to see how Scott's own novels—particularly Waverley, Rob Roy, The Monastery—yield an alternative account of the book as something scrappy, loosely bound, and made through scissors and paste methods: a temporary gathering ready to be dispersed once more. This essay explores the implications of this alternative account of the book for our ideas of novelistic form, and in particular for what Elaine Freedgood has called the “diegetic illusion”: a way of conceptualizing texts as though they were tightly bound books, which understands novels as the containers for enclosed, bounded worlds. To trace these implications is to see how the dispersive readings that helped define Scott's nineteenth-century afterlife might also prove useful points of reference for twenty-first-century efforts to decolonize novel studies’ understanding of its object.

Research paper thumbnail of 2. Literary History and the Man Who Loved Too Much

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. By G. Gabrielle Starr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp

Modern Language Quarterly, May 18, 2006

lessly over its merits at the time, we probably do really know now what it "means." This review, ... more lessly over its merits at the time, we probably do really know now what it "means." This review, as I conclude it, feels ungenerous. So let me end by stating that Wayward Contracts is, if not entirely convincing in its overall thesis, endlessly challenging and often very instructive in its parts. It is already being spoken of "in the trade" as the big book one must read. I am grateful for having had to read it so carefully. Now that is voluntary servitude.

Research paper thumbnail of 4. Going Steady

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of At Home with Jane Austen

Duke University Press eBooks, Nov 25, 1996

Research paper thumbnail of 1. Making It Personal

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. By G. Gabrielle Starr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp

Modern Language Quarterly, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning

Studies in Romanticism, 2003

... overcharged." The issues crit-ics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mi... more ... overcharged." The issues crit-ics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mimesis were issues of discursive economy. ... With the beginnings of the late eighteenth century's "affective revolution" and the advent of new linkages between novel reading, moral training, and ...

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction—Reading Spaces

PMLA, 2019

Reading Spaces evelyne ender and deidre shauna lynch EVELYNE ENDER is visiting professor in the D... more Reading Spaces evelyne ender and deidre shauna lynch EVELYNE ENDER is visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. She is finishing a book provisionally titled "Handwriting: An Inner History" and preparing a volume of essays on the value of literature in the medical humanities. Her essay "Jean Starobinski's Resistance to Theory-Le Regard de l'Absent" will appear in The Structuralist Controversy: De Baltimore 1966 à Aujourd'hui, a special issue of MLN forthcoming in 2019.

Research paper thumbnail of Paper Slips: Album, Archiving, Accident

Studies in Romanticism, 2018

. a quilt of patchwork consists of various miscellaneous pieces of different hues and qualities, ... more . a quilt of patchwork consists of various miscellaneous pieces of different hues and qualities, but jointly combining to make a pleasing and useful whole ... in the formation of the Album there is much wider scope for the Mind-a more intellectual occupation; whilst it keeps up a constant and rational excitement during its progress, it be comes a repository for the most endearing sentiments of friendship and affection.-John Britton, "An Album," prose paragraph written into the Mrs. Anna Birkbeck Album, ca. 1841 A sort of drive compels us to take the Book apart, to make it into a piece of lace.-Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel T he moment the eponymous narrator of "the adventures of an Album" launches its first-person memoir it is already on the defensive. Appearing in 1831 in the annual The Comic Offering; or Ladies' Melange of Literary Mirth, this tale has lines from Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for its epigraph: "'Tis pleasant sure to see oneself in print, / A book's a book although there's nothing in't." The first words this narrator addresses to its readers involve this "impertinent" couplet: "half a hundred persons of my acquaintance" will doubtless recall it, the narrator predicts, when they learn that a "poor Album (with no ideas of my own, and de pending for existence on the genius of others)" intends to write its own memoirs: "But this threadbare quotation is totally inapplicable to me: for al though I am a Book, yet it is unjust to say 'there's nothing in it', when so many of my pages are filled with charming poetry and unrivalled paintmgs. 1

Research paper thumbnail of PART 1. Choosing an Author as You Choose a Friend

Research paper thumbnail of PART 4. Dead Poets Societies

Research paper thumbnail of PART 3. English Literature for Everyday Use

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction: At Home in English

Research paper thumbnail of PART 2. Possessive Love

Research paper thumbnail of Gothic Fiction and “Belief in Every kind of Prodigy”

Research paper thumbnail of 5. Canon Love in Gothic Libraries

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Keeping Faith with Literature

Modern Language Quarterly, Dec 1, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 2007

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth ... more An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.

Research paper thumbnail of Sequels Deidre

Research paper thumbnail of Walter Scott's Loose Leaves: Books, Scraps, and Dispersive Reading

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Nov 1, 2022

Novel studies and book history alike emphasize the significance of Walter Scott's creation of... more Novel studies and book history alike emphasize the significance of Walter Scott's creation of his Magnum Opus edition (1829–33): a repossession, on behalf of a newly individuated author and between the covers of a uniformly manufactured edition, of publications that had previously appeared as the works of sundry authorial eidolons. For a nineteenth-century culture of collected editions, this act of rebinding represented a foundational moment. But Scott's novels also figured prominently within a robust tradition of commonplacing and scrapbooking in which books were understood as things that came apart, literally and figuratively, as well as things that came together. Nineteenth-century readers were keen to cut up, recontextualize, and reboot Scott's printed works inside their own homemade manuscript volumes. Guided by their practices, we are able to see how Scott's own novels—particularly Waverley, Rob Roy, The Monastery—yield an alternative account of the book as something scrappy, loosely bound, and made through scissors and paste methods: a temporary gathering ready to be dispersed once more. This essay explores the implications of this alternative account of the book for our ideas of novelistic form, and in particular for what Elaine Freedgood has called the “diegetic illusion”: a way of conceptualizing texts as though they were tightly bound books, which understands novels as the containers for enclosed, bounded worlds. To trace these implications is to see how the dispersive readings that helped define Scott's nineteenth-century afterlife might also prove useful points of reference for twenty-first-century efforts to decolonize novel studies’ understanding of its object.

Research paper thumbnail of 2. Literary History and the Man Who Loved Too Much

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. By G. Gabrielle Starr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp

Modern Language Quarterly, May 18, 2006

lessly over its merits at the time, we probably do really know now what it "means." This review, ... more lessly over its merits at the time, we probably do really know now what it "means." This review, as I conclude it, feels ungenerous. So let me end by stating that Wayward Contracts is, if not entirely convincing in its overall thesis, endlessly challenging and often very instructive in its parts. It is already being spoken of "in the trade" as the big book one must read. I am grateful for having had to read it so carefully. Now that is voluntary servitude.

Research paper thumbnail of 4. Going Steady

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of At Home with Jane Austen

Duke University Press eBooks, Nov 25, 1996

Research paper thumbnail of 1. Making It Personal

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2014