Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder

A footprint materializes mysteriously on a deserted shore; a giant helmet falls from the sky; a traveler awakens to find his horse dangling from a church steeple. Eighteenth-century fiction brims with moments such as these, in which the prosaic rubs up against the marvelous. While it is a truism that the period's literature is distinguished by its realism and air of probability, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder argues that wonder is integral to--rather than antithetical to-the developing techniques of novelistic fiction. Positioning its reader on the cusp between recognition and estrangement, between faith and doubt, modern fiction hinges upon wonder. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder unfolds its new account of fiction's rise through surprising readings of classic early novels--from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey-and brings to attention lesser-known works, most notably Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels. In this bold new account, the eighteenth century bears witness not to the world's disenchantment but rather to wonder's relocation from the supernatural realm to the empirical world, providing a reevaluation not only of how we look back at the Enlightenment, but also of how we read today.

Sarah Tindal Kareem was born in London to an Indian father and a Scottish mother. After reading English at Girton College, Cambridge, she received her PhD from Harvard University's Department of English in 2003. Postdoctoral fellowships took her to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, to UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and to the University of Chicago's Society of Fellows. In 2007 she returned to UCLA and is now Associate Professor in the Department of English where she specializes in literature from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder is her first book. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her husband and their two children.

- Introduction: Wonder and the Rise of Fiction - 1: Wonder in the Age of Enlightenment - 2: Rethinking the Real with Robinson Crusoe and David Hume - 3: Suspending the Reader in Tom Jones and The Castle of Otranto - 4: "Marvelous Tales of Wonders Performed, or Rather, Not Performed" in Baron Munchausen's Narrative - 5: "A Little Voyage of Discovery?": Fiction and the Pursuit of Knowledge - Epilogue