Character and Evolutionof Fiction in Restoration and 18th Century England

FAIN: FA-12182-78

Leo Braudy
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)

To do a study of the period which begins with the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Commonwealth period or Interregnum, and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. To trace the process by which the one fiction of coherence, Divine Providence, is transformed into the many fictions of coherence, whether political, economic, social, aesthetic, psychological or some combination, that characterize the modern period. The essential element in this transformation is the willingness of writers to allow the disruptive force of new types of human character into their stories, to vary the necessities of plot with the uncertainties of human nature.