Risk and the English Novel: From Defoe to McEwan

Contents
Introduction: Risk Theory and Narrative Fiction – An Interdisciplinary Overview
Part I. Survival Against the Odds: The Rise of Risk in the 18th‐century Novel
1. Calculating a New View of Life
2. Defoe and his Protagonists at Large in the Risk Society
3. Swift, Smollett, Sterne, and Walpole: Fears of Masculinity and Parodies of Calculation
4. Picturing Female Youth at Risk: Camilla
Part II. Out of the Ordinary: The Gamble of Life in the 19th‐century Novel
5. Old and New Concerns
6. Precariousness, Accidents, and Divisions
7. Epic Tales of Ambition and Speculation
8. The Dangers of Human Nature and the Struggle Between the Sexes
Part III. Crisis and Contingency: Threats to Humanity in the 20th- and 21st-century Novel
9. A Sense of Endings
10. Gendered Routines of Risk-Taking
11. Running Out of Time
12. Domestic (In)securities
Epilogue
Works Cited
Subject Index
Index of Persons