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| Author(s): |
Ludmila de Souza Maia
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas |
| Defense date: | 2011-02-09 |
| Examining board members: |
Maria Stella Martins Bresciani;
Leila Mezan Algranti;
Daniel Faria
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| Advisor: | Maria Stella Martins Bresciani |
| Abstract | |
This work is dedicated to the novel 'Clarissa, or the history of a Young lady', written by Samuel Richardson, and published in 1747-48. My purpose was to make a historiographic research by using a literary narrative. This novel creates, in a literary way, many of the most important social, political, and religious conflicts of the Eighteenth Century English society. The mishaps of the life of the novel's protagonist, between the country and the city, allowed me to analyze the social and gender relations in the Enlightenment England. The plot tells us the story of Clarissa, an aristocratic maiden in rural England. She inherits an estate from her grandfather, which provokes a familiar disturbance. The deprecated old brother convinces the family to marry her to an odious man, to avoid her independence and to profit from the business. She refuses the marriage and her persecution begins at home. In order to escape from tyranny, she fled to London with the libertine Lovelace, who courts her against her family's will. Her wish for autonomy is interrupted when his abductor imprisons and rapes in a brothel. She wishes virtue and an independent soul, and that's why she chooses death, as the only possible way to maintain her moral intact. Indeed, my goal with this research was to understand the mentioned society from the pages of the novel,whose analysis also comes from questions and references external to the plot (AU) | |