'A Philosophical Gossip': Science and sociability in Frances Burney's Cecilia

Sophie Marie Coulombeau

doi:10.1215/00982601-4384553

'A Philosophical Gossip': Science and sociability in Frances Burney's Cecilia

Sophie Marie Coulombeau

English and Related Literature

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In Frances Burney’s second novel, Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), the social taxonomist Mr. Gosport educates the protagonist in the ways of the bon ton by applying classificatory principles to metropolitan polite society. This article argues that Gosport’s methodology derives principally from the discourse of Linnaean taxonomy, with which Burney was familiar primarily through the personal tutelage of the botanist Daniel Solander (a social acquaintance of her father Charles, and a professional contact of her brother James). Ultimately, taxonomic discourse supplied Burney with a vocabulary with which to express anxieties about her place in an increasingly stratified and hierarchized print marketplace. Her eventual rejection of taxonomic sociability in Cecilia replicates her resistance to literary classification, and points towards a desire to be accounted, as she wrote to her sister Susan, “quelque chose extraordinaire.”

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	73-93
Journal	Eighteenth-Century Life
Volume	42
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-4384553
Publication status	Published - 2018

Bibliographical note

© 2018 Duke University Press. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

Access to Document

10.1215/00982601-4384553

Coulombeau, Sophie 2018. 'A Philosophical Gossip'- Science and sociability in Frances Burney's Cecilia. Eighteenth-Century Life 42 (2) , pp. 73-93. 10.1215_00982601-4384553
© 2018 Duke University Press. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.
Accepted author manuscript, 202 KB

http://orca.cf.ac.uk/id/eprint/110498

Cite this

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title = "'A Philosophical Gossip': Science and sociability in Frances Burney's Cecilia",

abstract = "In Frances Burney{\textquoteright}s second novel, Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), the social taxonomist Mr. Gosport educates the protagonist in the ways of the bon ton by applying classificatory principles to metropolitan polite society. This article argues that Gosport{\textquoteright}s methodology derives principally from the discourse of Linnaean taxonomy, with which Burney was familiar primarily through the personal tutelage of the botanist Daniel Solander (a social acquaintance of her father Charles, and a professional contact of her brother James). Ultimately, taxonomic discourse supplied Burney with a vocabulary with which to express anxieties about her place in an increasingly stratified and hierarchized print marketplace. Her eventual rejection of taxonomic sociability in Cecilia replicates her resistance to literary classification, and points towards a desire to be accounted, as she wrote to her sister Susan, “quelque chose extraordinaire.”",

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