Richardson, Samuel | Carol Houlihan Flynn (essay date 1982)
Carol Houlihan Flynn (essay date 1982)
SOURCE: "Horrid Romancing: Richardson's Use of the Fairy Tale," in Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters, Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 145-95.
[In the following excerpt, Flynn discusses how Richardson uses elements of the fairy tale in creating a fantastic world and contends that—through editorial power and attention to minutiae—he positions readers to accept the extraordinary as normal.]
Was ever the like heard? … But this, to be sure, is horrid romancing!
Pamela (I, 243-44) [I, 156]
In their study of fairy tales, lona and Peter Opie include among their illustrations one of Joseph Highmore's portraits of Pamela.1 Pamela is telling a nursery tale to a pensive-looking Miss Godwin, five of the B. cherubs, and the nursery maid, "delightedly pursuing some useful Needlework, for the...
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