MARC 主機 00000nam 2200361 4500
001 AAI3430507
005 20130625074527.5
008 130625s2010 ||||||||s|||||||| ||eng d
020 9781124299280
035 (UMI)AAI3430507
040 UMI|cUMI
100 1 Phillips, Natalie
245 10 Narrating distraction: Problems of focus in eighteenth-
century fiction, 1750-1820
300 302 p
500 Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-
12, Section: A, page: 4400
500 Adviser: John Bender
502 Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2010
520 This dissertation offers a literary history of the mental
state we now know as distraction. I argue that changing
theories of focus in the Enlightenment transformed
eighteenth-century models of mind and narrative.
Traditionally described by early modern writers as a mark
of sin, error, and madness, distraction was re-imagined in
the Enlightenment as a valued cognitive faculty---a shift
that I propose had powerful effects on contemporary
literature. Focusing on the time period around Denis
Diderot's radical redefinition of distraction as "an
excellent quality of the understanding" in his
Encyclopedie (1754), I bring together a constellation of
works engaged with theories of attention between 1750 and
1820, including Samuel Johnson's Rambler (1750-52) and
Idler (1758-60), Eliza Haywood's The History of Betsy
Thoughtless (1751), Laurence Sterne's The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67), and
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813). I suggest that
the friction between competing models of focus in the
Enlightenment turned distraction into a generative
literary trope, one that reshaped narrative techniques for
crafting authorial persona, point-of-view, style, and
characterization. Reading these works in terms of
distraction, I maintain, complicates our traditional story
of the novel's eighteenth-century genesis. It reveals not
simply an attempt to represent middle-class readers, but
an ongoing struggle to get their attention
520 There are as many kinds of distraction as there are kinds
of focus. To appreciate this complexity, my study
considers four types of distraction: wandering attention,
lapses of concentration, scattered focus, and divided
attention. My first chapter analyzes the conceit of
"wandering attention" in Johnson's Rambler and Idler; it
contends that his essays turn distraction into the central
trait of an authorial persona intended to attract and
reform inattentive readers Chapter Two explores the
gendering of distraction in Betsy Thoughtless; I propose
that creating a heroine prone to "lapses of concentration"
inspired Haywood to develop new techniques to manage
unreliable point of view. In Chapter Three, I move to
distracted heroes and to Sterne's Tristram Shandy. I
suggest that Sterne's attempt to translate "scattered
attention" into a narrative rhythm lies behind the novel's
innovative typography and modern style. I conclude my
study with a reading of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
showing that her novels turn "divided attention" into a
tool for building characters' psychological depth.
Austen's fictions use distraction to convey the intricacy
of a vibrant mind. As I explore the friction among
Enlightenment theories of concentration, I blend the tools
of narrative theory, literary history, and applied
cognitive science to model a new method for analyzing
literature in terms of attention---that of both characters
and readers. This methodology allows my work to speak to
literary critics, intellectual historians, sociologists of
reading, and cognitive scientists alike, reminding them of
the crucial role distraction's history plays in shaping
our modern perspective on the life of the mind
590 School code: 0212
650 4 History of Science
650 4 Literature, English
650 4 Psychology, Cognitive
690 0585
690 0593
690 0633
710 2 Stanford University
773 0 |tDissertation Abstracts International|g71-12A
856 40 |uhttps://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/
advanced?query=3430507
912 PQDT
