Amatory fiction as both novel and conduct literature : The Fair Triumvirate’s representation of conduct and seduction
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Kellyn P. Luna (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Christopher Hodgkins
Abstract: Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood—The Fair Triumvirate– authored incredibly popular tales of seduction in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Significant features of these texts, called amatory fiction, include seduction, female sexual desire, and virtue in distress. Contemporary and modern scholars often describe amatory fiction as antithetical to conduct literature because of the prominent seduction and sexual desire plots. Conduct literature includes books, sermons, letters, and essays consisting of rules or regulations, often religious, meant to keep people pure in body and mind and negate female sexual desire. The Fair Triumvirate adapted and challenged their predecessors––authors of romance, poetry, tragedies, and conduct books––writing seduction stories that influenced succeeding authors of fiction novels and conduct literature, such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Frances Burney. Recent scholarship discusses the important role of amatory fiction in developing the English novel. Questions arise about whether these books of amatory fiction are some of the first English novels and the influence of amatory fiction on the formation of the English novel. Literary conversation on amatory fiction focuses on the role of sex and the display of women’s sexual desire. Considering that other works discussing sex, morality, and virtue cast a decidedly negative light on women’s sexual desire, one might assume that amatory fiction operates inversely to conduct literature. Yet rather than functioning as anti-conduct books, most examples of amatory fiction reinforce the importance of proper conduct and morality— a counter-intuitive conclusion to those who sought to remove or exclude amatory works by women writers in the formation of the novel.
Amatory fiction as both novel and conduct literature : The Fair Triumvirate’s representation of conduct and seduction
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- Amatory Fiction, Aphra Behn, Conduct Literature, Delarivier Manley, Eighteenth Century Literature, Eliza Haywood
- Subjects
- Behn, Aphra, $d 1640-1689 $x Criticism and interpretation
- Haywood, Eliza Fowler, $d 1693?-1756 $x Criticism and interpretation
- Manley, Delarivier, $d -1724 $x Criticism and interpretation
- Conduct of life in literature
- Seduction in literature