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Article: Narrative Order, 1789-1819: Life and Story in an Age of Revolution.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Wordsworth Circle
- Article date:
- September 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Wordsworth Circle. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Gavin Edwards, Narrative Order, 1789-1819: Life and Story in an Age of Revolution
(Palgrave Macmillan 2006) viii + 207 $65.00
Gavin Edwards' Narrative Order, 1789-1819 details how familiar revolutions and social dislocations of the late eighteenth century provoked a "crisis of narrative order" (58) and "dissolution of the narrative idea of life" (159). To the many skepticisms of the Romantic period, Narrative Order adds "narrative skepticism"--skepticism of the bond between "finite sequence and systematic arrangement" (7); threats to social and political order induced writers to doubt that life could be narrated in order, from a certain beginning to a ...