American Literature / Unit 5 AML 0426 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Seduction Novel and the Early American Reader
Captions available
The idea
The seduction novel warns young women by showing one ruined, and it dominated early American fiction. Its machinery is a trusting girl, a persuasive officer, a false friend and a moralizing narrator who addresses the reader directly. The form let novels claim usefulness in a culture suspicious of fiction.
In practice
A ruin, narrated as a warning.
Where people slip
The moral frame was fiction's permission.
Your place on the trail
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