Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder

A footprint materializes mysteriously on a deserted shore; a giant helmet falls from the sky; a traveler awakens to find his horse dangling from a church steeple. Eighteenth-century fiction brims with moments such as these, in which the prosaic rubs up against the marvelous. While it is a truism that the period's literature is distinguished by its realism and air of probability, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder argues that wonder is integral to--rather than antithetical to--the developing techniques of novelistic fiction. Positioning its reader on the cusp between recognition and estrangement, between faith and doubt, modern fiction hinges upon wonder. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder's chapters unfold its new account of fiction's rise through surprising new readings of classic early novels-from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey-as well as bringing to attention lesser known works, most notably Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels. In this bold new account, the eighteenth century bears witness not to the world's disenchantment but rather to wonder's re-location from the supernatural realm to the empirical world, providing a re-evaluation not only of how we look back at the Enlightenment, but also of how we read today.

Sarah Tindal Kareem was born in London to an Indian father and a Scottish mother. After reading English at Girton College, Cambridge, she received her PhD from Harvard University's Department of English in 2003. Postdoctoral fellowships took her to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, to UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and to the University of Chicago's Society of Fellows. In 2007 she returned to UCLA as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in literature of the long eighteenth century. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder is her first book. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her husband and their two children.