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Giving Power to the Medium: Recovering the 1750s
- The Eighteenth Century
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Voume 52, Numbers 3-4, Fall/Winter 2011
- pp. 289-302
- 10.1353/ecy.2011.0025
- Article
- Additional Information
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The fiction of the 1750s has two characteristics: a high degree of reflexivity about the practices of reading and writing, and a foregrounding of material objects, including paper and print. This article argues that both forms of self-reference are used to underscore the inability of a reader to intervene in an openly fictional world. This connects the themes of the novels and shorter narratives from this time, as well as connecting them to a vein of entertainment that carries on today.