For your delectation, here’s an online essay from a doctoral candidate, Hannah Carlson, on those “object narratives” I mentioned in class:
http://www.common-place.org/vol-07/no-02/carlson/
As Carlson notes:
The object narrative dates to the early eighteenth century in Britain and usually involves currency (Johnstone’s Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Guinea [1760]) but also includes other articles of daily life: slippers and a bedstead narrate The History and Adventures of a Lady’s Slippers and Shoes (1754) and The History and Adventures of a Bedstead (1784), respectively. The pleasure of these tales comes from the unexpected insights (sometimes salacious) of an inanimate witness to human behavior, able to critically comment on “the Vices, Follies and Manners of the Present Age.” The object usually serves its owner (the slipper protects the foot, the bed provides comfort) who, in return, arbitrarily uses, sells, exchanges, and ultimately devalues it.
Shades of Moll Flanders?
