Abstract

This essay argues that Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker explores what it means to conceive of society as a network of relationships. In plotting the novel’s picaresque narrative on a map and casting it in epistolary form, Smollett contests the idea of novelistic representation as descriptive view or demographic account. This approach challenges and refines a range of powerful recent accounts of the novel in terms of space and circulation (Edward Said, Franco Moretti, Dierdre Lynch), arguing that Smollett’s conception of the novel as “a large diffused picture” reflects the emergence of a systemic view of society disclosed by networks of transportation and communication.

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