| This thesis explores "the Trollope problem" in the Barchester and Palliser series. An introduction examines the background, and focusses on the relationship between Trollopeian narrator and reader as crucial to the close reading of the novels.;Chapter One discusses critical reaction, and a new reading is proposed. Chapter Two discusses the narrator-reader's response to romantic conventions. It is suggested that the critical stereotype of Trollope's capitulation to convention is inaccurate. Chapter Three confirms this suggestion, demonstrating how the narrator-reader mechanism operates to diminish the hero and heroine. Chapter Four develops this argument to include the changing relationship of narrator and reader in the Palliser series, and argues Trollope's determination to expand the parameters of the novel. Chapter Five identifies a different kind of narrative interpolation, which reinforces the argument for Trollope's commitment to constant dialogue with reader and critic about the form of the series novel. |
