Creating the Effect of Particularized Character: Type as Tool in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

This article considers the question of why characters seem particularized and arguably more realistic within the eighteenth-century English novel, especially given recent work by scholars insisting on the recognition of traditional literary conventions like allegory and romance as much more strongly present than previously thought in characters and novels sometimes labelled realist. It shows how some eighteenth-century authors, such as Frances Burney (1752–1840), mobilize one kind of convention, typically understood as literary precedent, within novel narratives as a part of how they particularize their protagonists, and it makes a case for further examination of how conventional and particular elements interact to form character in the eighteenth-century novel.