Losing the Plot, Gaining Perspective

Lost Plots: Interpolated Tales and the Eighteenth-Century Novel by Katherine G. Charles

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A character walks into an inn for a meal and a rest. A woman looks up and says, “Let me tell you a story.”

That’s not the setup to a hokey joke; it’s the formal structure of the interpolated tale, or “tale-within-a-tale,” a common form of the 18th-century novel and the focus of Lost Plots: Interpolated Tales and the Eighteenth-Century Novel, a new book out by Katherine G. Charles, associate professor of 18th- and 19th-century literature and the director of Washington's iconic Kiplin Hall program.

Interpolated tales are intact, separate stories interjected within the plot of a novel. During her research of these tales, Charles noticed that there are no set “rules” for how to deploy the form, “at least not beyond its basic definition: a complete tale voiced by a new narrator. It’s a kitchen sink form—any content holds the potential to be interpolated into another story.” Sometimes these interjections would be marked on the page, say by three asterisks or by a chapter title, other times not.

Charles described the gap between the perspectives of the novel and the tale as being like a dream sequence in a movie or television show. “With a new narrator comes the chance for not only a new perspective but a new genre or a new reality.”

“They’re an awkward narrative move,” Charles said, “They break the charismatic bond between reader and narrator, and risk losing the reader’s attention.”

After collecting examples from Don Quixote, authors Henry and Sarah Fielding, and dozens of other texts, Charles came to realize that the function of the form varied widely across novels. Sometimes, the tales included a clue about the novel’s plot to be revealed later, while others were completely disconnected from the original plot and ranged in thematic relevance. Regardless of differences in form or function, Charles argues in Lost Plots that these tales became a site for negotiating social and gender differences.

The 18th-century is the first century of the novel in English, by most definitions. By the 19th-century, authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens could draw on every technique of the modern novel and publish for a fully developed market. “But first, before the novel had other methods for incorporating additional perspectives, interpolated tales were the main tool at authors’ disposal,” Charles said. “It’s a flexible form where just about anything is possible.” 

Despite the near-universality of interpolated tales in eighteenth-century novels, during the period later identified as “the rise of the novel,” the first generation of novel critics deemed them “a failure of form.” To Charles, the question became: if these interpolated tales are such a defining feature of the novel at the time, why are they so perplexing for critics and readers?

“That back-and-forth contradiction and at times virulent pro-con debate made me suspect that something interesting might be at stake,” Charles said.

In her book, Charles recognizes interpolated tales as a category worthy of analysis, raising new questions about how these tales should be read.

Each chapter of Lost Plots explores a different case study for the function of interpolated tales, but all look toward the book’s central argument: that the form of interpolated tales is useful for thinking about gender and the perspective of individuals (and characters) who occupy a subordinate position. “Historically, women have less access to public speech, less authority.  Interpolated tales can offer space for playing around with the expected power dynamic that comes with assigned gender roles, and even for flipping the script.”

The literary history constructed through Lost Plots offers an entryway for assessing how various texts and readers think about who gets to speak and be heard, choices that are acutely important in the context of gender.

Charles has been working on this research for 15 years. After the work began, she discovered that the tales that most bothered critics were fictions of oral storytelling that had one character telling another a story, seemingly without connection to the novel’s primary narrative.

“The traditional method of European literary criticism is that the part represents the whole, but these parts don’t necessarily, which creates an analytical dilemma,” Charles said, “That’s the fun part, for me. What do we do with these stubborn parts that so often refuse to fit in?”

Not only scholars, but all readers face a set of potential problems when they come across interpolated tales. Some skipped the tales entirely, others didn’t notice that the narrative had shifted, while others still found their interruptions unnerving.  Despite the frequency of negative responses, Charles also found evidence that some 18th-century readers named these “seemingly throwaway” tales as their favorite parts of larger novels.  Some reported reading only the tales, later corresponding with friends about the “juiciest” ones.

Lost Plots is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in January 2026. As a scholarly monograph, its primary audience is academics and students. That said, Charles’ background as a journalist helped her to “never lose track of the general reader,” so the book is accessible to broader audiences. Those with an interest in the novel, the history of the novel, or core functions of storytelling will find reasons to read Lost Plots.

This is Charles’ first book. Her scholarly work has previously appeared in Modern Language Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and her journalistic writing has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, and Marie Claire.

— MacKenzie Brady ’21