Reading Fictions, 1660-1740

Reading Fictions, 1660-1740 PDF

Author: Kate Loveman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1351906585

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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.

The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction

The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction PDF

Author: Daniel Cook

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-09-29

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1316299120

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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.

Samuel Pepys and His Books

Samuel Pepys and His Books PDF

Author: Kate Loveman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0198732686

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Uses Pepys's surviving papers to examine reading practices, book collecting, and the exchange of information in the late 17th century.

The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set

The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set PDF

Author: Gary Day

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-03-09

Total Pages: 1524

ISBN-13: 1444330209

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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

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America PDF

Author: James L. Machor

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0801899338

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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

Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder PDF

Author: Sarah Tindal Kareem

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-10-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0191003123

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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 Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel PDF

Author: J. A. Downie

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-07-21

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191651060

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Although the emergence of the English novel is generally regarded as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, this is the first book to be published professing to cover the 'eighteenth-century English novel' in its entirety. This Handbook surveys the development of the English novel during the 'long' eighteenth century-in other words, from the later seventeenth century right through to the first three decades of the nineteenth century when, with the publication of the novels of Jane Austen and Walter Scott, 'the novel' finally gained critical acceptance and assumed the position of cultural hegemony it enjoyed for over a century. By situating the novels of the period which are still read today against the background of the hundreds published between 1660 and 1830, this Handbook not only covers those 'masters and mistresses' of early prose fiction-such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Scott and Austen-who are still acknowledged to be seminal figures in the emergence and development of the English novel, but also the significant number of recently-rediscovered novelists who were popular in their own day. At the same time, its comprehensive coverage of cultural contexts not considered by any existing study, but which are central to the emergence of the novel, such as the book trade and the mechanics of book production, copyright and censorship, the growth of the reading public, the economics of culture both in London and in the provinces, and the re-printing of popular fiction after 1774, offers unique insight into the making of the English novel.

The Rise of the Novel

The Rise of the Novel PDF

Author: Nicholas Seager

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-09-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1137284951

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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

Secular Chains PDF

Author: Philip Connell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 019107831X

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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

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

Author: James Walters

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1783276045

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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.