Producing the Body : Habeas Corpus and Closure in Burney's Court Diaries [abstract]

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger project which investigates the ways in which eighteenth-century novelist Frances Burney's body of work (novels, plays, and life-writing) create a sense (or no-sense) of an ending. In this paper, I examine Burney's writing during the five miserable years she served as a handmaiden to the Queen at Court, a time where Burney's physical and mental endurance was put to one of its harshest tests.