Jan Gordon
The Politics of Public Opinion: Trollope's ’Tenth Muse’ takes as its subject the rise of public opinion in the nineteenth-century British novel as (1) a uniquely collective narrative form posing as a singular voice and (2) a 'voice' that distances itself from re-sponsibility by disguising its presence. As both immanent and transcendent, public opinion is aligned with 'empty universals' that generate meaning.