'A full and proper madness': Influence, education, and environments in William Godwin's fiction

The purpose of this study is to examine William Godwin's later novels Fleetwood: or, the New Man of Feeling and Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century as representative of Godwin's overarching interest in psychological development. In an attempt to explain why the main characters of both of these novels go insane, I will look at the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Romanticism, and the Locke-derived theory of anti-innatism on Godwin's fiction and pedagogical theory as it develops from Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams to Mandeville.; Godwin's fiction oftentimes presents ambiguities in influence that are difficult to resolve; however, recognizing the diversity of Godwin's approach to his fiction allows for a deeper and more valuable analysis of Godwin's beliefs about psychological development and shows him to be a key figure in late eighteenth-century literature and psychological theory.