The Wound and the Show: Representations of Eccentricity in Sterne, Wordsworth, Lamb, and Dickens
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation explores eccentrics as characters, and eccentricity as a stylistic signature, in the work of four writers between the mid-eighteenth and later nineteenth century: Laurence Sterne, William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Charles Dickens. It takes off from the eccentric as a figure who the reader perceives as damaged or hurt in some way, yet who also conveys a peculiar kind of pleasure or a sense of reassurance, ambiguously situated between the character’s subjectivity and the reader’s experience. This ambiguity, I suggest, relates to an obliquity in the communication of feeling that renders the eccentric figure inaccessible to full sympathy or understanding, thereby guaranteeing a kind of immunity. The eccentric differs from the solitary or exile in that his estrangement depends upon a contingent social context or audience; I argue that such contingency is essential to the effect of the eccentric upon others, generating uncertainties about how far his predicament is generalisable. My account of why eccentricity matters is supported by two explanatory frameworks. In David Hume’s philosophy of self-experience, we see a shift from the emphasis of Lockean epistemology, which investigates the formation of patterns between self and world, toward a concern with trust and intersubjectivity. Hume’s philosophy of self-experience, preserved from inward collapse by the repetitions of custom, implies an eccentricity — an incommensurability of being — concealed only as long as uniform social conventions hold sway. I also draw upon psychoanalytic writings as offering a privileged later model for how to access unavailable feelings interpersonally. In particular, I use D. W. Winnicott’s account of how a child negotiates the impingement of external reality upon his inner world, which emphasises non-interpretability as a positive value, and offers illuminating analogies with the elusive integrity evoked by the eccentric figures on display. In each chapter, I interpret e…
abstract: This dissertation explores eccentrics as characters, and eccentricity as a stylistic signature, in the work of four writers between the mid-eighteenth and later nineteenth century: Laurence Sterne, William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Charles Dickens. It takes off from the eccentric as a figure who the reader perceives as damaged or hurt in some way, yet who also conveys a peculiar kind of pleasure or a sense of reassurance, ambiguously situated between the character’s subjectivity and the reader’s experience. This ambiguity, I suggest, relates to an obliquity in the communication of feeling that renders the eccentric figure inaccessible to full sympathy or understanding, thereby guaranteeing a kind of immunity. The eccentric differs from the solitary or exile in that his estrangement depends upon a contingent social context or audience; I argue that such contingency is essential to the effect of the eccentric upon others, generating uncertainties about how far his predicament is generalisable. My account of why eccentricity matters is supported by two explanatory frameworks. In David Hume’s philosophy of self-experience, we see a shift from the emphasis of Lockean epistemology, which investigates the formation of patterns between self and world, toward a concern with trust and intersubjectivity. Hume’s philosophy of self-experience, preserved from inward collapse by the repetitions of custom, implies an eccentricity — an incommensurability of being — concealed only as long as uniform social conventions hold sway. I also draw upon psychoanalytic writings as offering a privileged later model for how to access unavailable feelings interpersonally. In particular, I use D. W. Winnicott’s account of how a child negotiates the impingement of external reality upon his inner world, which emphasises non-interpretability as a positive value, and offers illuminating analogies with the elusive integrity evoked by the eccentric figures on display. In each chapter, I interpret e…
author: Haughton-Shaw, Eliza
language: eng
keywords: Eccentricity, Psychoanalysis, Romanticism, Character, Play, Anticlimax, Nostalgia, William Wordsworth, Laurence Sterne, Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/1a8005c4-d151-4169-81a2-2b393b7e689b/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2021-05-31
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:11Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.78117