Writing and reading the individual : the development of personal narrative in the works of Defoe, Richardson, and Boswell

Abstract

By specifically focusing upon the works of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and James Boswell, this study describes stylistic and content shifts that occur within narrative writing during the eighteenth century. A close analysis of non-fictional and fictional personal narrative provides insight on writers and readers, the emergence of the novel, and the changing depiction of self in prose. Some assumptions underlying this study are the beliefs that individuals are influenced by what they read, different genres affect and influence one another, and the dividing line between factual and fictional narrative is more cloudy than clear. To better establish a literary context for early prose fiction, a number of published diaries and journals from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are examined throughout the study. Though no evidence for a causal relationship between Defoe's works and journals exists, many similarities between the two forms are apparent, and the first two chapters of the study discuss these similarities in detail. Chapter Three argues that though Richardson uses the diary and letter form in his works, he departs from the reliance upon realistic personal writing that governed Defoe's writing. Richardson reveals how the conventional characteristics of the novel were beginning to transcend the familiar characteristics of journal writing. With Boswell, one observes that the attributes of novel writing were beginning to affect people's own personal writings. His journals, travel books, and biography of Samuel Johnson contain the kind of psychological development and character description evident in novels of his day. Boswell's writing reveals that the relationship between the diary and novel had reversed itself. Chapter Four, which focuses upon Boswell, acts as counterpoint to the Defoe chapter. Defoe's fiction seems imitative of journal writing, but Boswell's journals exhibit characteristics of the novel at work in his non-fictional prose. Ultimately, studying fictional and non-fictional narrative in tandem places the issue of genre during the eighteenth century into question. Simply measuring Defoe's works against other novels or evaluating Boswell's biography of Johnson against other biographies is too limiting for these writers who cross genre lines.