LE3 .A278 2023

2023

Ahern, Stephen

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

This thesis illustrates the process by which real readers become fictionalized in Joseph Andrews and Oliver Twist. I examine the rules and restrictions by which the Reader is forced to abide, and how these restrictions create the illusion of the Reader’s intrinsic inclusion in the narrative. In Joseph Andrews and Oliver Twist, Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens create a fictional figure for the real reader to play, thereby allowing the Reader to take part in the fiction. This fictional Reader is inserted by the narrator who acts as their guide, inciting the Reader to participate in the story. In chapter one I investigate the process by which the fictional Reader is formed alongside the narrator in Joseph Andrews. Throughout the text, Fielding creates the illusion that there is an interplay happening between Reader and narrator, insinuating not only that the Reader and narrator are interacting, but that they become intimate with each other. In chapter two I examine how Oliver Twist acquaints the Reader with its fictional characters and in so doing lets the Reader interact and become intimate with them. The interactive relationships between the Reader and the characters leads the Reader to rely on the characters in order to navigate the story. As their relationship with the characters unfolds, the Reader has to decide which characters are worth relying on as characters distinguish themselves as allies or adversaries of the Reader. In this thesis I demonstrate how the story of the Reader is interwoven in the story of the text in Joseph Andrews and Oliver Twist, telling the story of how the fictional Reader comes to know and rely on the fictional narrator, how they come to trust or spurn its fictional characters, and how they get to move through and in the midst of a fictional world.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:4026