The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, Vols. 1-2

Lennox, Charlotte, 1729？-1804Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
837K words
Chapters
84

Tags

English Originals Classic Works Love IllusionPsychological InsightRomanticismLiterary ParodySatirical StyleFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, v. 1-2 by Charlotte LennoxAuthor: Lennox, Charlotte, 1729?-1804,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 25, 2015

Editor's review

The Female Quixote is the representative work of the eighteenth-century English novelist Charlotte Lennox. Through Arabella, a heroine steeped in romance fiction, it wittily satirizes the chivalric romance tradition and gender discipline. Written in a Cervantine parody mode, it lets readers see the tension between reading imagination and real-world order in the absurdity of the heroine applying fictional plots to actual life. Its value lies not only in narrative delight but in its early examination, from a female perspective, of the effect of novel reading on the mind, making it instructive for understanding the rise of the eighteenth-century English novel and the tradition of women's writing. The Gutenberg edition is the original English text, suitable as supplementary reading for English literature courses and for readers interested in early fiction, women's literature, and parodic narrative, who can savor its layers of irony and period context.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a brief introduction to Don Quixote first, then approach this book to understand the object of parody
  2. Pause briefly after each volume to sort out specific instances of Arabella's misreading of reality
  3. Consult background materials on eighteenth-century British women's education to understand the social thrust of the satire
  4. When encountering long sentences, first grasp the main clause and then review the modifiers; make paragraph summaries when necessary

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

What is the relationship between this book and Don Quixote? The title itself signals the parodic relationship: the heroine Arabella is as obsessed with romance novels as Don Quixote is with chivalric romances, and she applies fictional plots to real life, producing a series of misunderstandings and satirical effects. Readers familiar with the basic plot of Don Quixote will more easily grasp the narrative strategy and layers of satire in this book.
Is the Gutenberg edition in Chinese or English? This edition is an English-language ebook released by Project Gutenberg, with the language marked as English. It contains no Chinese translation, so a certain level of English reading ability is required. If your experience with English reading is limited, you may first use an annotated edition or related introduction to understand the background, and then attempt the original text.
Why is it said to be worth studying for women's writing? Lennox was an important woman novelist of the eighteenth century. This book centers on a female protagonist's reading frenzy and discusses how novel reading shapes women's imagination of reality, while also indirectly responding to contemporary criticism of women reading novels. This makes it frequently mentioned in studies of women's literary history and the rise of the novel, and suitable as a text for thematic reading.

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About the author

Lennox, Charlotte, 1729？-1804 Author · British · 1729–1804

Charlotte Lennox (1729?–1804) was an English novelist and poet. Her exact birth year remains uncertain in available public sources, and details of her life are likewise limited. She is best known for the novel The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, which uses a Cervantine mode to tell of a young woman steeped in romance fiction and her encounters with reality, examining female reading and imagination through parody and making it a distinctive work in the eighteenth-century English novel. Besides fiction, Lennox also wrote poetry and studied Shakespeare. Her writing combines narrative with satire and attends to women's education and emotional lives, showing a distinctive observant eye within the literary culture of her time.