Spoken from the impulse of the moment: Epistolarity, Sensibility and Breath in Frances Burney's Evelina

Skinner, Gillian

Abstract

Skinner explores the neglected role of breath in the mapping and understanding of eighteenth-century sensibility. Thematically rich in their associations with body and spirit, life and death, breath and breathlessness are also woven into the stylistic particularities of both sentimental and epistolary fiction. Examination of the epistolarity of Evelina, and the dramatic use of dialogue Burney became known for, reveals breathlessness as the signifier of intense and instinctive moral discernment of the kind described by eighteenth-century philosophers such as Frances Hutcheson, complicating the view that the heroine of epistolary fiction more generally, and Evelina in particular, is purely passive. Instead, she emerges as actively involved in numerous scenarios that at once challenge her capacity for moral conduct and allow her to demonstrate her power to act.

Citation

Skinner, G. (2020). Spoken from the impulse of the moment: Epistolarity, Sensibility and Breath in Frances Burney's Evelina. In C. Saunders, D. Fuller, & J. Macnaughton (Eds.), The life of breath in literature, culture, and medicine: classical to contemporary (241-259). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_12

• Online Publication Date: Oct 2, 2021
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Feb 5, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 12, 2021
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 241-259
• Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
• Book Title: The life of breath in literature, culture, and medicine: classical to contemporary.
• ISBN: 9783030744427
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_12
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1652367