{"id":{"repo_id":"wustl","oai_identifier":"oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-1631"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/wustl/oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-1631","repository":{"repo_id":"wustl","name":"Washington University in St. Louis","base_url":"https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/do/oai/"},"display":{"title":"Relational Selves in Eighteenth-Century Literature","abstract":"We imagine the eighteenth century to be the time when modern individuals constituted themselves against the forces of communal obligation, when marriage emerged as a union based on singular affection, and when heterosexuality cohered as an ideology. But Relational Selves in Eighteenth Century Literature argues that a libertine logic of communal attraction, spontaneous affiliation, and transitory affection remains central to the literary production of modern selfhood in the eighteenth century. It thus departs from well-established critical narratives that entwine the modern self with the eighteenth-century emergence of sexual complementarity, the companionate marriage, and bourgeois individualism. I show instead how eighteenth-century literature privileged transient pleasures over more fixed models of companionship in the pursuit of selfhood. Reading works by James Thomson, Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, and D.A.F. Sade, I argue that their literary portrayals of male and female selves cultivate a far more fluid sense of identity, one that ultimately derives from the libertine world of the Restoration and its fugitive desires. By insisting that the individual becomes bounded and autonomous through widely dispersed investments of affect, Relational Selves offers an alternative to modernizing narratives that see communal experiences as detracting from a highly particularized sense of self.","abstract_html":"We imagine the eighteenth century to be the time when modern individuals constituted themselves against the forces of communal obligation, when marriage emerged as a union based on singular affection, and when heterosexuality cohered as an ideology. But Relational Selves in Eighteenth Century Literature argues that a libertine logic of communal attraction, spontaneous affiliation, and transitory affection remains central to the literary production of modern selfhood in the eighteenth century. It thus departs from well-established critical narratives that entwine the modern self with the eighteenth-century emergence of sexual complementarity, the companionate marriage, and bourgeois individualism. I show instead how eighteenth-century literature privileged transient pleasures over more fixed models of companionship in the pursuit of selfhood. Reading works by James Thomson, Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, and D.A.F. Sade, I argue that their literary portrayals of male and female selves cultivate a far more fluid sense of identity, one that ultimately derives from the libertine world of the Restoration and its fugitive desires. By insisting that the individual becomes bounded and autonomous through widely dispersed investments of affect, Relational Selves offers an alternative to modernizing narratives that see communal experiences as detracting from a highly particularized sense of self.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Parker, Kate"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"English and Comparative Literature","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Wolfram Schmidgen"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2011-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T06:12:32Z","subjects":["British and Irish literature","Romance literature","Gender studies","18th century","eighteenth century","relational","selfhood","selves","sensibility"],"languages":["English (en)"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.7936/K7KS6PNH"],"render_values":[{"text":"https://doi.org/10.7936/K7KS6PNH","href":"https://doi.org/10.7936/K7KS6PNH","code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/632","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Wolfram Schmidgen"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Parker, Kate"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2014-04-06T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English and Comparative Literature"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["British and Irish literature","Romance literature","Gender studies","18th century","eighteenth century","relational","selfhood","selves","sensibility"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["English (en)"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/632"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.7936/K7KS6PNH"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["We imagine the eighteenth century to be the time when modern individuals constituted themselves against the forces of communal obligation, when marriage emerged as a union based on singular affection, and when heterosexuality cohered as an ideology. But Relational Selves in Eighteenth Century Literature argues that a libertine logic of communal attraction, spontaneous affiliation, and transitory affection remains central to the literary production of modern selfhood in the eighteenth century. It thus departs from well-established critical narratives that entwine the modern self with the eighteenth-century emergence of sexual complementarity, the companionate marriage, and bourgeois individualism. I show instead how eighteenth-century literature privileged transient pleasures over more fixed models of companionship in the pursuit of selfhood. Reading works by James Thomson, Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, and D.A.F. Sade, I argue that their literary portrayals of male and female selves cultivate a far more fluid sense of identity, one that ultimately derives from the libertine world of the Restoration and its fugitive desires. By insisting that the individual becomes bounded and autonomous through widely dispersed investments of affect, Relational Selves offers an alternative to modernizing narratives that see communal experiences as detracting from a highly particularized sense of self."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Relational Selves in Eighteenth-Century Literature"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Wolfram Schmidgen"],"dc:creator":["Parker, Kate"],"dc:date.available":["2014-04-06T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["We imagine the eighteenth century to be the time when modern individuals constituted themselves against the forces of communal obligation, when marriage emerged as a union based on singular affection, and when heterosexuality cohered as an ideology. But Relational Selves in Eighteenth Century Literature argues that a libertine logic of communal attraction, spontaneous affiliation, and transitory affection remains central to the literary production of modern selfhood in the eighteenth century. It thus departs from well-established critical narratives that entwine the modern self with the eighteenth-century emergence of sexual complementarity, the companionate marriage, and bourgeois individualism. I show instead how eighteenth-century literature privileged transient pleasures over more fixed models of companionship in the pursuit of selfhood. Reading works by James Thomson, Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, and D.A.F. Sade, I argue that their literary portrayals of male and female selves cultivate a far more fluid sense of identity, one that ultimately derives from the libertine world of the Restoration and its fugitive desires. By insisting that the individual becomes bounded and autonomous through widely dispersed investments of affect, Relational Selves offers an alternative to modernizing narratives that see communal experiences as detracting from a highly particularized sense of self."],"dc:identifier":["https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/632"],"dc:identifier.doi":["https://doi.org/10.7936/K7KS6PNH"],"dc:language":["English (en)"],"dc:subject":["British and Irish literature","Romance literature","Gender studies","18th century","eighteenth century","relational","selfhood","selves","sensibility"],"dc:title":["Relational Selves in Eighteenth-Century Literature"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["English and Comparative Literature"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T06:12:32Z"}