The early novel and probability theory: uncertainty, risk and moral choice

This work investigates the relation between classical probability theory and the product that Literature and Literary Criticism has institutionalized as the early novel. Such relation is studied applying both a morpho-structural (formal) approach and one based on history of mentality; for the former, a causative paradigm is used as it is the most suitable to highlight the epistemological relation between the emergence of probability theory and that of the early novel which bear consequences on the form of the literary texts under scrutiny here; for the latter, a generative paradigm is developed which will foreclose the common project of the two discourses: that of creating a new kind of subjectivity, endowed with a degree of rationality, functionality, and morality called the Enlighted self. Departing from the critical position of analytical philosophy that literary theory with its focus on discourse, neglecting questions of form and structure, has overlooked the aesthetic value (and hence the autonomy) of literature, this work with its combined double approach shows that the two approaches can coexist and if properly integrated can shed light on important peculiarities of the early novel and more broadly on the studies of literary genres. Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy will be interpreted applying the theoretical framework developed here; chapter seven concludes; the coda presents some future perspectives of this framework using as a case study, Jane Austen.