“Truth was so blended with falsehood”: Truth, Misrepresentation, and Letters in Charlotte Smith’s Desmond
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During the French Revolution, letters played a crucial role in the debate on the Revolution among the English. This paper discusses the ways in which author Charlotte Smith engages in fictional epistolary narrative to participate in the debate through her novel Desmond (1792). Writing epistolary fiction was a new and challenging experience for her, as expressed in her concerns in the preface to Desmond. However, she ably employs letters in different ways to describe English society, where misrepresentations of the Revolution were widespread. While showing two conflicting points of view, either within a single letter or among multiple letters, she portrays letters as a means of delivering truth as well as an obstacle to reaching truth. She represents her trustworthy narrator Lionel Desmond as a person capable of hiding the truth, placing her readers in a state of uncertainty. By examining these diverse rhetorical strategies of the letter form and by tracing the shifting of Desmond’s narrative authority, this paper shows the ways in which Smith encourages her readers to cast doubt on the genuineness of the information presented, as well as the necessity for challenging all information that is presented as truth.
Abstract
During the French Revolution, letters played a crucial role in the debate on the Revolution among the English. This paper discusses the ways in which author Charlotte Smith engages in fictional epistolary narrative to participate in the debate through her novel Desmond (1792). Writing epistolary fiction was a new and challenging experience for her, as expressed in her concerns in the preface to Desmond. However, she ably employs letters in different ways to describe English society, where misrepresentations of the Revolution were widespread. While showing two conflicting points of view, either within a single letter or among multiple letters, she portrays letters as a means of delivering truth as well as an obstacle to reaching truth. She represents her trustworthy narrator Lionel Desmond as a person capable of hiding the truth, placing her readers in a state of uncertainty. By examining these diverse rhetorical strategies of the letter form and by tracing the shifting of Desmond’s narrative authority, this paper shows the ways in which Smith encourages her readers to cast doubt on the genuineness of the information presented, as well as the necessity for challenging all information that is presented as truth.
참고문헌 (16)
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