Number and Pattern in the Eighteenth-Century Novel - 9780367443962

Taylor & Francis

Number and Pattern in the Eighteenth-Century NovelDefoe, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne\nAuthor(s): Douglas Brooks\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780367443962, 978-0367443962\nSynopsis\nNumerological patterning in literature, where structural details of a literary work are symbolically related to its meaning on the verbal level, was particularly common from the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. Originally published in 1973, the author breaks new ground in revealing that familiarity with this technique lived on into the eighteenth century, supplying the more artistically aware of the early British novelists with meaningful formal guidelines.\n\nAn account is given of the origins and continuity of the numerological tradition in Western European and particularly English thought as it affected literary structure. The careful structural patterning in the novels of Defoe and in Fieldings Joseph Andrews and Tom.