Downward Mobility in the Sentimental Novel

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Binhammer, Katherine

• SSHRC Awarded IG 2015: My research project combines economic history and novel studies to analyze stories of downward mobility circulating in British culture during the second half of the eighteenth century. "Downward Mobility in the Sentimental Novel" takes as its specific object of study the preponderance of stories of bankruptcy, lost status, and economic crises in sentimental fiction, such as Sarah Fielding's 'The Adventures of David Simple,' Oliver Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' and Frances Burney's 'Cecilia.' By studying the way late-eighteenth-century novels narrate downward mobility, my project will argue for the importance of sentimental fiction to the emergence of the story that infinite economic growth is not only possible but natural and desirable, a narrative that remains the dominant script of global capital today. I propose that downward mobility may be as important a myth as upward mobility to the cultural history of capitalism.

• Date created

  2014-10-03

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Successful SSHRC Application
  • Cultural Theory
  • Literature
  • Narrative Theory
  • IG
  • Capitalism
  • Arts and Culture
  • Cultural History
  • 2015
  • Sentimental Fiction
  • The Adventures of David Simple
  • Novel
  • Economic History
  • 18th C
  • 1740-1800
  • Vicar of Wakefield
  • Myth Making
  • Cecilia
  • North America
  • Downward Mobility
  • Europe

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3BV7B85C

• License

  © Binhammer, Katherine. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2023.