Novel of circulation explained

The novel of circulation, otherwise known as the it-narrative, or object narrative,^[1] is a genre of novel common at one time in British literature, and follows the fortunes of an object, for example a coin, that is passed around between different owners. Sometimes, instead, it involves a pet or other domestic animal, as for example in Francis Coventry's The History of Pompey the Little (1751).^[2] This and other such works blended satire with the interest for contemporary readers of a roman à clef.^[3] They also use objects such as hackney-carriages and bank-notes to interrogate what it meant to live in an increasingly mobile society, and to consider the effect of circulation on human relations.^[4]

Examples

• 1709 Charles Gildon, The Golden Spy has been regarded by modern scholars as "the first, fully-fledged it-narrative in English".^[5] But for his contemporaries, it tends to be read as "a Menippean satire, a re-adaptation of Apuleius's The Golden Ass and a sequel to The New Metamorphosis [i.e. Gildon's adaptation of ''The Golden Ass'' in 1708]".^[6] Later, an episodic structure in which objects "spied" on people became established.^[7] Other generic terms used are "object tales" or "spy novels".^[8]
• 1734 Anonymous, The Secret History of an Old Shoe^[9]
• 1742 Claude Crébillon, The Sopha, a Moral Tale^[10]
• 1751 Francis Coventry The History of Pompey the Little
• 1753 Susan Smythies, The Stage-coach: containing the character of Mr. Manly, and the history of his fellow-travellers^[10]
• 1754 Anonymous, History and Adventures of a Lady's Slippers and Shoes^[11]
• 1760 Edward Phillips, The Adventures of a Black Coat^[12]
• 1760–5 Charles Johnstone, Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Golden Guinea^[2]
• 1767 Charles Perronet, Dialogue between the Pulpit and Reading-Desk^[10]
• 1769 Tobias Smollett, The History and Adventures of an Atom^[10]
• 1771 Thomas Bridges, The Adventures of a Bank-Note^[13]
• 1783 Theophilus Johnson, Phantoms: or, The Adventures of a Gold-Headed Cane^[14]
• 1790 Helenus Scott, The Adventures of a Rupee^[15]
• 1799 Edward Augustus Kendall, The Crested Wren^[10]
• 1813 Mary Pilkington, The Sorrows of Caesar, or, The Adventures of a Foundling Dog^[10]
• 1816 Mary Mister, The Adventures of a Doll^[10]
• 1873 Annie Carey, The History of a Book^[16]
• 1880 Nellie Hellis, The Story He was told; or, The Adventures of a Teacup^[17]
• 1897, John William Fortescue, The Story of a Red Deer^[18]

Twentieth-century examples include Ilya Ehrenburg's The Life of the Automobile (1929)^[19], Holling C. Holling's Paddle-to-the-sea (1941),^[20] and E. Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes (1996).^[21]

Relationship to other genres

With works of Mary Ann Kilner of the 1780s, Adventures of a Pincushion and Memoirs of a Peg-Top, it-novels became part of children's literature.^[22] One offshoot was a style of satirical children's verse made popular by Catherine Ann Dorset, based on a poem by William Roscoe, The Butterfly's Ball and The Grasshopper's Feast.^[23] Quite generally, it-narrative in the 19th century is typified by an animal narrator.^[24]

It has been remarked that the slave narrative genre of the 18th century avoided being confused with the it-narrative, being thought of as a type of biography.^[25]

The plot of Middlemarch has been seen to be structured, initially, by a circulation; but to end in a contrasting "subject narrative".^[26]

Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle have argued that one popular form of hyperlink cinema, a genre of film characterized by intersecting and multilinear plots, constitutes a contemporary form of it-narrative.^[27] In these films, they argue, "the narrative link is the characters' relation to the film's product of choice, whether it be guns, cocaine, oil, or Nile perch."^[27]

Notes and References

1. Book: Wolfram Schmidgen. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property. registration. 2002. Cambridge University Press. 978-1-139-43482-9. 127.
2. Book: John Mullan. How Novels Work. 12 October 2006. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-162292-2. 149.
3. Book: Liz Bellamy. Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. 26 September 2005. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-02037-4. 121.
4. Book: Ewers . Chris . Mobility in the English Novel from Defoe to Austen . 2018 . Boydell and Brewer . 101-102.
5. Jonathan Lamb (2001), 'Modern Metamorphoses and Disgraceful Tales', Critical Inquiry 28:1 (2001), pp. 133–66, reprinted in Bill Brown (ed.), Things (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 193–226 (p. 213).
6. Jingyue Wu (2017), '"Nobilitas sola est atq; unica Virtus": Spying and the Politics of Virtue in The Golden Spy; or, A Political Journal of the British Nights Entertainments (1709)', Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40:2 (2017), pp. 237–53 doi: 10.1111/1754-0208.12412
7. Book: Olivia Murphy. Jane Austen the Reader: The Artist as Critic. 22 February 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. 978-1-137-29241-4. 79.
8. Book: Mark Blackwell. The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England. 2007 . Bucknell University Press. 978-0-8387-5666-9. 10.
9. Book: Jolene Zigarovich. Sex and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature. 2 May 2013. Routledge. 978-1-136-18237-2. 58.
10. Book: Mark Blackwell. The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England. 2007 . Bucknell University Press. 978-0-8387-5666-9. 135–8.
11. Book: Wolfram Schmidgen. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property. registration. 2002. Cambridge University Press. 978-1-139-43482-9 . 128.
12. Book: Christina Lupton. Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain . 29 November 2011. University of Pennsylvania Press. 978-0-8122-0521-3. 49–.
13. Nicholas Hudson (2005) "Social Rank, 'The Rise of the Novel,' and Whig Histories of Eighteenth-Century Fiction", Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Vol. 17: Iss. 4 (2005), p. 587
14. Book: David Scott Kastan. The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. 2006 . Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-516921-8. 114.
15. Book: Liz Bellamy. Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. 26 September 2005. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-02037-4. 120.
16. Price . Leah . From The History of a Book to a 'history of the book' . . 108 . 1 . 2009 . 120–138 . 10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.120. 146277774 .
17. Book: Mark Blackwell. The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England. 2007 . Bucknell University Press. 978-0-8387-5666-9. 142.
18. Book: Mark Blackwell. The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England. 2007 . Bucknell University Press. 978-0-8387-5666-9. 144.
19. Book: Alberto. Toscano. Jeff. Kinkle. Cartographies of the Absolute . Zero. 2015. 192, 285.
20. Book: Wyndham Wise. Wyndham Wise. Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film. https://books.google.com/books?id=m4Y_OgckDmIC&q=The%20Street%20Leaf%20Richler&pg=PA159. 2001-09-08. University of Toronto Press. 978-0802083982. 159. Paddle to the Sea.
21. Book: E. Annie Proulx. Accordion Crimes. 1996. Scribner . 0-684-83154-6. registration.
22. Book: Mark Blackwell. The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England. 2007. Bucknell University Press. 978-0-8387-5666-9. 280.
23. Book: Frederick Burwick. Nancy Moore Goslee. Diane Long Hoeveler. The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature. 30 January 2012. John Wiley & Sons. 978-1-4051-8810-4. 237.
24. Book: Laura Brown. Homeless Dogs & Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination. registration. 2010. Cornell University Press. 978-0-8014-4828-7. 123.
25. Book: John Ernest. The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative. 2014. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-973148-0. 70.
26. Book: Leah Price. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain. 9 April 2012. Princeton University Press. 978-1-4008-4218-6. 108.
27. Book: Alberto. Toscano. Alberto Toscano. Jeff. Kinkle. Cartographies of the Absolute. Zero Books. 2015. 192.