Writing Alterity On The Fringes Of Belief:Economy, Self-Construction, And The Body Politics In Three Mid-Century "Histories" Of Georgian England

This thesis examines the relationship between economy, self-construction, and the body politics in English "alterity" novels of the mid-eighteenth century. Such novels, I argue, usually tend to undertake the project of forming a body politics featured by a common didactic aim, i.e. to rescue or redeem the society from its indulgence in "a Torrent of Luxury" and "Sound and Senselessness." And I suggest that economy in these novels influences the construction of selfhood and the body politics therewith on two levels at least, as both a constitutive factor of subjectivity and economic relations that govern the movements of the fictive body, which in turn exerts impact on the self-fashioning of the sovereign subject.Given the vast number of mid-century alterity novels, this study concentrates on three typical texts of fictive alterity writing, with each representing one primary category, namely, The History of Pompey the Little (1751) of Francis Coventry (the anthropo-based category), The History of Rasselas (1759) of Samuel Johnson (the nation-based one), and A Description of Millenium Hall (1762) of Sarah Scott (the gender-based one). And they each adopt a distinctive method of advancing their respective body politics, in order to extricate the British society from its imminent decline induced by luxury, corruption, and moral turpitude.Another central purpose of my thesis is to further affirm the diversified formative influences on the "origins" of the English novel, especially those of the transnational and translational discourses like spy narrative,"oriental" tale, surveillance discourse, and the travel writing. Besides, this study also seeks to answer a much-vexed question concerning "alterity" novels, i.e. why a discrepancy always exists between the fictional and historical constructions of body politics.