Reading Fictions, 1660-1740

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Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9780754662372
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading Fictions, 1660-1740 by : Kate Loveman

Download or read book Reading Fictions, 1660-1740 written by Kate Loveman and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kate Loveman explores the ways in which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century reading habits were applied to and shaped genres. Examining works by authors such as Defoe, Swift, Richardson and Fielding, she recovers a lost critical discourse through which authors and readers interrogated, mocked, and elaborated fictions. Her lively book offers a striking new approach to Restoration and eighteenth-century literature and politics, in particular to understanding the development of the novel.

Reading Fictions, 1660-1740

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351906585
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading Fictions, 1660-1740 by : Kate Loveman

Download or read book Reading Fictions, 1660-1740 written by Kate Loveman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English society in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was fascinated by deception, and concerns about deceptive narratives had a profound effect on reading practices. Kate Loveman's interdisciplinary study explores the ways in which reading habits, first developed to deal with suspect political and religious texts, were applied to a range of genres, and, as authors responded to readers' critiques, shaped genres. Examining responses to authors such as Defoe, Swift, Richardson and Fielding, Loveman investigates reading as a sociable activity. She uncovers a lost critical discourse, centred on strategies of 'shamming', which involved readers in public displays of reason, wit and ironic pretence as they discussed the credibility of oral and written narratives. Widely understood by early modern readers and authors, the codes of this rhetoric have now been forgotten, to the detriment of our perception of the period's literature and politics. Loveman's lively book offers a striking new approach to Restoration and eighteenth-century literary culture and, in particular, to understanding the development of the novel.

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 0801899338
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading Fiction in Antebellum America by : James L. Machor

Download or read book Reading Fiction in Antebellum America written by James L. Machor and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James L. Machor offers a sweeping exploration of how American fiction was received in both public and private spheres in the United States before the Civil War. Machor takes four antebellum authors—Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Catharine Sedgwick, and Caroline Chesebro'—and analyzes how their works were published, received, and interpreted. Drawing on discussions found in book reviews and in private letters and diaries, Machor examines how middle-class readers of the time engaged with contemporary fiction and how fiction reading evolved as an interpretative practice in nineteenth-century America. Through careful analysis, Machor illuminates how the reading practices of nineteenth-century Americans shaped not only the experiences of these writers at the time but also the way the writers were received in the twentieth century. What Machor reveals is that these authors were received in ways strikingly different from how they are currently read, thereby shedding significant light on their present status in the literary canon in comparison to their critical and popular positions in their own time. Machor deftly combines response and reception criticism and theory with work in the history of reading to engage with groundbreaking scholarship in historical hermeneutics. In so doing, Machor takes us ever closer to understanding the particular and varying reading strategies of historical audiences and how they impacted authors’ conceptions of their own readership.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191003123
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder by : Sarah Tindal Kareem

Download or read book Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder written by Sarah Tindal Kareem and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A footprint materializes mysteriously on a deserted shore; a giant helmet falls from the sky; a traveler awakens to find his horse dangling from a church steeple. Eighteenth-century fiction brims with moments such as these, in which the prosaic rubs up against the marvelous. While it is a truism that the period's literature is distinguished by its realism and air of probability, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder argues that wonder is integral to—rather than antithetical to—the developing techniques of novelistic fiction. Positioning its reader on the cusp between recognition and estrangement, between faith and doubt, modern fiction hinges upon wonder. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder unfolds its new account of fiction's rise through surprising readings of classic early novels—from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey—and brings to attention lesser-known works, most notably Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels. In this bold new account, the eighteenth century bears witness not to the world's disenchantment but rather to wonder's relocation from the supernatural realm to the empirical world, providing a reevaluation not only of how we look back at the Enlightenment, but also of how we read today.

The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1444330209
Total Pages : 1524 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (443 download)

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Book Synopsis The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set by : Gary Day

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set written by Gary Day and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 1524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the poetry, drama, fiction, and literary and cultural criticism produced from the Restoration of the English monarchy to the onset of the French Revolution Comprises over 340 entries arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Written by an international team of leading and emerging scholars Features an impressive scope and range of subjects: from courtship and circulating libraries, to the works of Samuel Johnson and Sarah Scott Includes coverage of both canonical and lesser-known authors, as well as entries addressing gender, sexuality, and other topics that have previously been underrepresented in traditional scholarship Represents the most comprehensive resource available on this period, and an indispensable guide to the rich diversity of British writing that ushered in the modern literary era 3 Volumes www.literatureencyclopedia.com

The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198827172
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe by : Nicholas Seager

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe written by Nicholas Seager and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe is the most comprehensive overview available of the author's life, times, writings, and reception. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is a major author in world literature, renowned for a succession of novels including Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and A Journal of the Plague Year, but more famous in his lifetime as a poet, journalist, and political agent. Across his vast oeuvre, which includes books, pamphlets, and periodicals, Defoe commented on virtually every development and issue of his lifetime, a turbulent and transformative period in British and global history. Defoe has proven challenging to position--in some respects he is a traditional and conservative thinker, but in other ways he is a progressive and innovative writer. He therefore benefits from the range of critical appraisals offered in this Handbook. The Handbook ranges from concerns of gender, class, and race to those of politics, religion, and economics. In accessible but learned chapters, contributors explore salient contexts in ways that show how they overlap and intersect, such as in chapters on science, environment, and empire. The Handbook provides both a thorough introduction to Defoe and to early eighteenth-century society, culture, and literature more broadly. Thirty-six chapters by leading literary scholars and historians explore the various genres in which Defoe wrote; the sociocultural contexts that inform his works; his writings on different locales, from the local to the global; and the posthumous reception and creative responses to his works.

The Rise of the Novel

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1137284951
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (372 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of the Novel by : Nicholas Seager

Download or read book The Rise of the Novel written by Nicholas Seager and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have scholars located the emergence of the novel in eighteenth-century England? What historical forces and stylistic developments helped to turn a disreputable type of writing into an eminent literary form? This Reader's Guide explores the key critical debates and theories about the rising novel, from eighteenth-century assessments through to present day concerns. Nicholas Seager: - Surveys major criticism on authors such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Jane Austen - Covers a range of critical approaches and topics including feminism, historicism, postcolonialism and print culture - Demonstrates how critical work is interrelated, allowing readers to discern trends in the critical conversation. Approachable and stimulating, this is an invaluable introduction for anyone studying the origins of the novel and the surrounding body of scholarship.

Secular Chains

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019107831X
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Secular Chains by : Philip Connell

Download or read book Secular Chains written by Philip Connell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secular Chains offers an original and richly contextualized account of the relationship between poetry and religious controversy between 1649 and 1745. This was a period of political conflict and intellectual upheaval, in which traditional sources of spiritual authority were variously challenged and transformed. This study reveals the importance of English literary culture for our understanding of this process, and throws new light on the dynamics of change and continuity between the puritan revolution and the early Enlightenment. Based on extensive research in both printed and manuscript sources, the book combines detailed case studies of major literary figures with a sustained historical narrative linking the republican moment of the 1650s, the conflicts and crises of the Restoration, and the ecclesiastical politics of the early eighteenth century. Milton and Dryden provide the principal focus of the first three chapters, which explore the divisive issue of church settlement in the work of both writers, together with the increasingly prominent rhetoric of anti-clericalism and irreligion in the poetry and polemics of the later seventeenth century. Subsequent chapters extend the book's argument to the embattled condition of the Church of England in the decades after 1688, and the significant contribution of contemporary literary culture to a range of religious and philosophical argument, from heterodox free-thinking to Newtonian natural theology. Secular Chains demonstrates the close and continued relationship between poetry and religious politics in the age of Milton and Pope, and provides a new framework for understanding this complex and turbulent period in English literary history.

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1660-1696

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Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783276045
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1660-1696 by : James Walters

Download or read book The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1660-1696 written by James Walters and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how the form and function of the Covenants were shorn of religious implications and repurposed, serving a pluralistic vision of the role of religion in politics and public life. Until now, scholarship on the Covenants has mainly focussed on their role in the conflicts of the 1640s, with discussion of the Covenants after 1660 mostly limited to the context of violent Scottish radicalism. This book moves beyond a rigid focus on Scotland to explore the legacy of the Covenants in England. It examines the discourse surrounding key events in the Restoration period and traces the influence of the Covenants in the context of radical Presbyterianism, and in mainstream debates around politics, church government, and the constitution of the British kingdoms. The Covenants continued to have relevance in two primary respects. Firstly, the Covenants were used as reference points for discussing the competing legacies of the English and Scottish Reformations and the confused issues of church and state that defined the Restoration period. Furthermore, the form of the Covenants as solemn individual subscriptions to a constitutional and religious model, and the political ideas that underpinned them, were emulated by those seeking to resist royal authority during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, and during the events surrounding the Revolution of 1688. Thus, this book holds particular interest for students of constitutionalism, legal pluralism or civil religion in seventeenth-century Britain, and for those seeking to deepen their understanding of the intellectual origins of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Revolution of 1688-9.

Dryden and Enthusiasm

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192548360
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Dryden and Enthusiasm by : John West

Download or read book Dryden and Enthusiasm written by John West and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dryden's writing, enthusiasm is a source of literary authority. It signals divinely inspired literary creativity. It is central to Dryden's theoretical defences of the relationship between literature and the passions. It is also crucial to his poetic practice in a variety of genres, from odes to religious poems to translations. Enthusiasm, for Dryden, ultimately enables literature to break into regions of knowledge beyond rational human comprehension. Yet after the rise of radical sectarianism in the 1640s and 1650s, where claims of inspiration legitimised challenges to established political authority, enthusiasm also carried dangerous theological and political connotations. In Dryden's writing, enthusiasm is thus also a pejorative term. It is used to attack political radicals and religious dissenters. In the aftermath of the Civil Wars, it is at the root of many perceived threats to the stability of the Restoration state. This book explores the paradoxical place of enthusiasm in Dryden's writing and the role he conceived for it in art and society after the violent upheavals of the mid seventeenth century. Works from across his oeuvre are explored, from his early essays and heroic plays to his translations, via new readings of his famous political and religious poems. These are read alongside other major writers of the period, like Milton, and less well-known authors, such as John Dennis. The book suggests new ways of conceptualising the relationship between literary practice and ideological allegiance in Restoration England. It reveals Dryden to be a writer who was consistently interested in the limits of what literature could express, what feelings it could provoke, and what it could make people believe at a time when such questions were of uncertain political importance.

Seventeenth-Century Fiction

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191057096
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Seventeenth-Century Fiction by : Jacqueline Glomski

Download or read book Seventeenth-Century Fiction written by Jacqueline Glomski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few years, discussion of fiction in all sorts of media has intensified. The prominence of literary critics has increased, the awarding of lucrative book prizes has become more publicized, and reports of the formation of reading groups have proliferated. Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text & Transmission responds to the present interest in the novel by offering a fresh approach to the history of early modern fiction that shifts away from the outmoded 'rise-of-the-novel' perspective and reaches beyond the boundaries of a single national literature. Starting from the literary text and looking outwards, this volume focuses on the changes in prose forms and their usage at a critical point in the evolution of modern fiction, and comes to grips with the instabilities of the novel and novella during this period. It explores the nature of seventeenth-century fiction and examines how authors fused fictional and non-fictional materials to create new, hybrid genres. Furthermore, it takes into consideration the cultural interchange between different geographical regions and languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Neo-Latin), and uncovers the deeper roots of seventeenth-century literary innovation, by casting light on the Continental influences on the formation of the English novel and on the role played by women's writings at the time. This landmark volume not only contributes to a more comprehensive history of the novel but promotes an authentic appreciation of early modern fiction.

The Oxford English Literary History

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192537830
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford English Literary History by : Margaret J. M. Ezell

Download or read book The Oxford English Literary History written by Margaret J. M. Ezell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. Each of these thirteen groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers. This volume covers the period 1645-1714, and removes the traditional literary period labels and boundaries used in earlier studies to categorize the literary culture of late seventeenth-century England. It invites readers to explore the continuities and the literary innovations occurring during six turbulent decades, as English readers and writers lived through unprecedented events including a King tried and executed by Parliament and another exiled, the creation of the national entity 'Great Britain', and an expanding English awareness of the New World as well as encounters with the cultures of Asia and the subcontinent. The period saw the establishment of new concepts of authorship and it saw a dramatic increase of women working as professional, commercial writers. London theatres closed by law in 1642 reopened with new forms of entertainments from musical theatrical spectaculars to contemporary comedies of manners with celebrity actors and actresses. Emerging literary forms such as epistolary fictions and topical essays were circulated and promoted by new media including newspapers, periodical publications, and advertising and laws were changing governing censorship and taking the initial steps in the development of copyright. It was a period which produced some of the most profound and influential literary expressions of religious faith from John Milton's Paradise Lost and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, while simultaneously giving rise to a culture of libertinism and savage polemical satire, as well as fostering the new dispassionate discourses of experimental sciences and the conventions of popular romance.

The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316299120
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (162 download)

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Book Synopsis The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction by : Daniel Cook

Download or read book The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction written by Daniel Cook and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction probes the adaptation and appropriation of a wide range of canonical and lesser-known British and Irish novels in the long eighteenth century, from the period of Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood through to that of Jane Austen and Walter Scott. Major authors, including Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, are discussed alongside writers such as Sarah Fielding and Ann Radcliffe, whose literary significance is now increasingly being recognised. By uncovering this neglected aspect of the reception of eighteenth-century fiction, this collection contributes to developing our understanding of the form of the early novel, its place in a broader culture of entertainment then and now, and its interactions with a host of other genres and media, including theatre, opera, poetry, print caricatures and film.

The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199566747
Total Pages : 625 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel by : J. A. Downie

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel written by J. A. Downie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth Century Novel is the first published book to cover the 'eighteenth-century English novel' in its entirety. It is an indispensible resource for those with an interest in the history of the novel.

Reading It Wrong

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691252343
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading It Wrong by : Abigail Williams

Download or read book Reading It Wrong written by Abigail Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How eighteenth-century literature depended on misinterpretation—and how this still shapes the way we read Reading It Wrong is a new history of eighteenth-century English literature that explores what has been everywhere evident but rarely talked about: the misunderstanding, muddle and confusion of readers of the past when they first met the uniquely elusive writings of the period. Abigail Williams uses the marginal marks and jottings of these readers to show that flawed interpretation has its own history—and its own important role to play—in understanding how, why and what we read. Focussing on the first half of the eighteenth century, the golden age of satire, Reading It Wrong tells how a combination of changing readerships and fantastically tricky literature created the perfect grounds for puzzlement and partial comprehension. Through the lens of a history of imperfect reading, we see that many of the period’s major works—by writers including Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift—both generated and depended upon widespread misreading. Being foxed by a satire, coded fiction or allegory was, like Wordle or the cryptic crossword, a form of entertainment, and perhaps a group sport. Rather than worrying that we don’t have all the answers, we should instead recognize the cultural importance of not knowing.

Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137455411
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (374 download)

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Book Synopsis Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture by : Heather Kerr

Download or read book Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture written by Heather Kerr and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores ways in which passions came to be conceived, performed and authenticated in the eighteenth-century marketplace of print. It considers satire and sympathy in various environments, ranging from popular novels and journalism, through philosophical studies of the Scottish Enlightenment, to last words, aesthetics, and plastic surgery.

Daniel Defoe and the Representation of Personal Identity

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317247612
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

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Book Synopsis Daniel Defoe and the Representation of Personal Identity by : Christopher Borsing

Download or read book Daniel Defoe and the Representation of Personal Identity written by Christopher Borsing and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of a personal identity was a contentious issue in the early eighteenth century. John Locke’s philosophical discussion of personal identity in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding fostered a public debate upon the status of an immortal Christian soul. This book argues that Defoe, like many of this age, had religious difficulties with Locke’s empiricist analysis of human identity. In particular, it examines how Defoe explores competitive individualism as a social threat while also demonstrating the literary and psychological fiction of any concept of a separated, lone identity. This foreshadows Michel Foucault’s assertion that the idea of man is ‘a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge’. The monograph’s engagement with Defoe’s destabilization of any definition or image of personal identity across a wide range of genres – including satire, political propaganda, history, conduct literature, travel narrative, spiritual autobiography, piracy and history, economic and scientific literature, rogue biography, scandalous and secret history, dystopian documentary, science fiction and apparition narrative - is an important and original contribution to the literary and cultural understanding of the early eighteenth century as it interrogates and challenges modern presumptions of individual identity.