| Abstrakt: |
This essay investigates Haywood's insertion of songs into her fictional works. In it, I argue that Haywood's use of songs evolves over time from a rhetorical, narratological function to a dramatic, performative function. Haywood first adapts, from her translation of French romances, the rhetorical and narratological strategies that are present in French literary works. Songs inserted into prose fiction present the reader with an aphoristic moment that offers the reader a lyrical lesson. With Haywood's mid-century domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless , she continues to experiment with the aphoristic function of songs and includes multi-medial references to ballad tunes. In so doing, she blends the aesthetic strategies of French romance with the dramatic, performative strategies of ballad operas. These inserted songs, then, offer the reader an interpretive lens through which to analyze The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless , a reading which has Jacobite undertones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
