Death and Madame. Ghosting the Doctor in Burneyland

In this chapter, the aims of my analysis are manifold and intriguingly interlaced. First of all, I open to preliminary investigation the function of death in Frances Burney's biographical and autobiographical writings. Then, I explore Frances Burney's narrative of Charles Burney's death as a rhetorical strategy in connection with authorship and the production of "cultural capital", in Pierre Bourdieu's theory. Therefore, I outline the journey Frances envisages for her father from the mortality of the body (the factual level) to the immortality of fame (the fictional level). I suggest that the death of Charles Burney signifies more than a simple demise. It represents the climax of a carefully constructed life progress (possibly even with proto-Victorian hues) thanks to skilful allusion and associative accumulation. I argue that the Memoirs, whole nation, as concocted by Frances in pays indirect tribute to Charles Burney on the eve of his death. Finally, I verify the hypothesis that what I call the 'hyper narrator' of Memoirs– that is to say, in my model, the admixture of the Doctor's and Frances's voices, and all the other voices that make up the narrative choir of – orders and constructs death through tropes, and signifying allusions. Death is recounted indirectly – "slantwise" – while death speech finally becomes self-speech. Behind the death of the father, I argue, we recognise the writing shadow of the daughter, just as in life, behind the daughter's works, there often emerged the phantom of the father's reputation and aspirations.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 892230. The PI is Francesca Saggini. See CORDIS website at https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/892230