Dangers Near and Far

Dangers Near and Far: Narrative Positions in Science, Seafaring, and the Novel, 1660-1800

My book project, Dangers Near and Far: Narrative Positions in Science, Seafaring, and the Novel, 1660-1800, introduces a new narratological concept, narrative position: where a story is told from. I show how this method can connect narrative with knowledge and geography by linking narrative position to epistemic position and spatial position.

I model this method through a literary history of the virtual position: a highly mobile, disembodied vantage that conveys observations detached from any person or group of people, yet which remains limited to uncertain judgments about appearances rather than perfect knowledge of what is there. The virtual position is signaled by features including the passive voice, subjunctive mood, nominalizations, and an emphasis on objects. It is closely related to scientific objectivity and especially prevalent in contemporary scientific writing. I show how this position developed in relation to other narrative positions across British scientific writing, maritime literature, and prose fiction from 1660 to 1800.

My guiding argument is that the virtual position consolidated as a way to manage the large-scale dangers of expanding overseas empire, those terrifying threats to survival that lurked obscurely somewhere between the near and the far. Key authors include Robert Boyle, William Dampier, Daniel Defoe, and Ann Radcliffe, along with a host of natural philosophers, seafarers, and novelists across genres.