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...narrative (58) and "dissolution of the narrative idea of life" (159). To the many skepticisms of the Romantic period, Narrative Order adds "narrative skepticism"--skepticism of the bond between "finite sequence and systematic arrangement" (7); threats to social and political order induced writers to doubt that life could be narrated in order, from a certain beginning to a conclusive end. Narrative Order registers this doubt in "the compositional stratification" (14) of narratives as generically diverse as travel journals, short lyrics, novels, and political prose, such as Burke's Reflections. Attending to the historical denotations of narrative terms and to speech-act theory, Edwards' close readings demonstrate how these narratives "aspire to an illocutionary force that brings about a contract" or otherwise "attempt to structure lives as narratives" (152-3). However, the contracts, promises, and bonds which formally connect beginnings to endings--in public and private life, as in written narratives--"repeatedly turn out to be bonds in the negative sense, bondage" (153).
Edwards' second chapter, "Samuel Johnson and the Order of Time," discusses Johnson's "codification" of the "'narrative idea of life'" (22) and his Life of Savage, in which imposed narrative order...
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