Ben Brice
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199290253
- eISBN:
- 9780191710483
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290253.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Coleridge tended to view objects in the natural world as if they were capable of articulating truths about his own poetic psyche. He also regarded such objects as if they were capable of illustrating ...
More
Coleridge tended to view objects in the natural world as if they were capable of articulating truths about his own poetic psyche. He also regarded such objects as if they were capable of illustrating and embodying truths about a transcendent spiritual realm. After 1805, he posited a series of analogical ‘likenesses’ connecting the rational principles that inform human cognition with the rational principles that he believed informed the teleological structure of the natural world. Although he intuitively felt that nature had been constructed as a ‘mirror’ of the human mind, and that both mind and nature were ‘mirrors’ of a transcendent spiritual realm, he never found an explanation of such experiences that was fully immune to his own sceptical doubts. This book examines the nature of these doubts, and offers a new explanatory account of why Coleridge was unable to affirm his religious intuitions. The book situates his work within two important intellectual traditions. The first — a tradition of epistemological ‘piety’ or ‘modesty’ — informs the work of key precursors such as Kant, Hume, Locke, Boyle, and Calvin, and relates to Protestant critiques of natural reason. The second — a tradition of theological voluntarism — emphasizes the omnipotence and transcendence of God, as well as the arbitrary relationship subsisting between God and the created world. It is argued that Coleridge's familiarity with both of these interrelated intellectual traditions undermined his confidence in his ability to read the symbolic language of God in nature.Less
Coleridge tended to view objects in the natural world as if they were capable of articulating truths about his own poetic psyche. He also regarded such objects as if they were capable of illustrating and embodying truths about a transcendent spiritual realm. After 1805, he posited a series of analogical ‘likenesses’ connecting the rational principles that inform human cognition with the rational principles that he believed informed the teleological structure of the natural world. Although he intuitively felt that nature had been constructed as a ‘mirror’ of the human mind, and that both mind and nature were ‘mirrors’ of a transcendent spiritual realm, he never found an explanation of such experiences that was fully immune to his own sceptical doubts. This book examines the nature of these doubts, and offers a new explanatory account of why Coleridge was unable to affirm his religious intuitions. The book situates his work within two important intellectual traditions. The first — a tradition of epistemological ‘piety’ or ‘modesty’ — informs the work of key precursors such as Kant, Hume, Locke, Boyle, and Calvin, and relates to Protestant critiques of natural reason. The second — a tradition of theological voluntarism — emphasizes the omnipotence and transcendence of God, as well as the arbitrary relationship subsisting between God and the created world. It is argued that Coleridge's familiarity with both of these interrelated intellectual traditions undermined his confidence in his ability to read the symbolic language of God in nature.
John Mullan
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122524
- eISBN:
- 9780191671449
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122524.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
With the rise of the novel in the mid-18th century came the rise of sentimentalism. While the fondness for sentiment embarrassed later literary critics, it originally legitimized a morally suspect ...
More
With the rise of the novel in the mid-18th century came the rise of sentimentalism. While the fondness for sentiment embarrassed later literary critics, it originally legitimized a morally suspect phenomenon: the novel. This book describes that legitimation, yet it looks beyond the narrowly literary to the lives and expressed philosophies of some of the major writers of the age, showing the language of feeling to be a resource of philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, as much as novelists like Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne.Less
With the rise of the novel in the mid-18th century came the rise of sentimentalism. While the fondness for sentiment embarrassed later literary critics, it originally legitimized a morally suspect phenomenon: the novel. This book describes that legitimation, yet it looks beyond the narrowly literary to the lives and expressed philosophies of some of the major writers of the age, showing the language of feeling to be a resource of philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, as much as novelists like Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne.
Fred Parker
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199253180
- eISBN:
- 9780191719189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
‘The more we enquire, the less we can resolve’, wrote Johnson. Scepticism — a reasoned emphasis on the severe limitations of rationality — would seem to undermine the grounds of belief and action. ...
More
‘The more we enquire, the less we can resolve’, wrote Johnson. Scepticism — a reasoned emphasis on the severe limitations of rationality — would seem to undermine the grounds of belief and action. But in some of the best 18th-century literature, a theoretically paralysing critique of the pretensions of reason, precept, and language went hand in hand with a vigorous intellectual, ethical, and linguistic confidence. The conjunction of philosophy with literature is crucial; to realize philosophical scepticism as literature was effectively to transform it; and to perceive this transformation is to understand how and where intelligent thinking may be necessarily literary. The book traces the presence of this life-giving irony in works by Pope (An Essay on Man and the Horatian Epistle to Bolingbroke), Hume (the Treatise, Enquiries, and Dialogues), Sterne (Tristram Shandy), and Johnson (especially Rasselas); discusses its source in Locke and its inspiration in Montaigne, and relates it more broadly to the social self-consciousness of 18th-century culture, and to the pressures on religious belief. The argument serves as a reminder that radical scepticism is not a peculiarly modern (or postmodern) invention, and that its strategies and implications have never been more interestingly explored than in the 18th-century, to ultimately affirmative effect.Less
‘The more we enquire, the less we can resolve’, wrote Johnson. Scepticism — a reasoned emphasis on the severe limitations of rationality — would seem to undermine the grounds of belief and action. But in some of the best 18th-century literature, a theoretically paralysing critique of the pretensions of reason, precept, and language went hand in hand with a vigorous intellectual, ethical, and linguistic confidence. The conjunction of philosophy with literature is crucial; to realize philosophical scepticism as literature was effectively to transform it; and to perceive this transformation is to understand how and where intelligent thinking may be necessarily literary. The book traces the presence of this life-giving irony in works by Pope (An Essay on Man and the Horatian Epistle to Bolingbroke), Hume (the Treatise, Enquiries, and Dialogues), Sterne (Tristram Shandy), and Johnson (especially Rasselas); discusses its source in Locke and its inspiration in Montaigne, and relates it more broadly to the social self-consciousness of 18th-century culture, and to the pressures on religious belief. The argument serves as a reminder that radical scepticism is not a peculiarly modern (or postmodern) invention, and that its strategies and implications have never been more interestingly explored than in the 18th-century, to ultimately affirmative effect.
Ben Brice
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199290253
- eISBN:
- 9780191710483
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290253.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses some aspects of Coleridge's published prose works written between 1815 and 1825, including The Statesman's Manual (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), The Friend (1818), and ...
More
This chapter discusses some aspects of Coleridge's published prose works written between 1815 and 1825, including The Statesman's Manual (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), The Friend (1818), and Aids to Reflection (1825). It argues that while Coleridge remained trapped within Hume's ‘fork’ of anthropomorphism and agnosticism, and cannot be said to have discovered an original solution to the philosophical and religious questions he encountered, his writings on religion, and particularly his pained acknowledgement of uncertainty and doubt, were authentic responses to the profound intellectual problems he had inherited from his precursors.Less
This chapter discusses some aspects of Coleridge's published prose works written between 1815 and 1825, including The Statesman's Manual (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), The Friend (1818), and Aids to Reflection (1825). It argues that while Coleridge remained trapped within Hume's ‘fork’ of anthropomorphism and agnosticism, and cannot be said to have discovered an original solution to the philosophical and religious questions he encountered, his writings on religion, and particularly his pained acknowledgement of uncertainty and doubt, were authentic responses to the profound intellectual problems he had inherited from his precursors.
James Noggle
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199642434
- eISBN:
- 9780191738579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642434.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
In his Essays and The History of England, David Hume portrays individuals’ immediate taste as ‘almost inseparable’from the large historical forces that shape a culture’s progress. In stressing this ...
More
In his Essays and The History of England, David Hume portrays individuals’ immediate taste as ‘almost inseparable’from the large historical forces that shape a culture’s progress. In stressing this linkage, Hume helps inspire Scottish Enlightenment historiography, which views advances of liberty, commerce, and taste as integrally joined. But Hume remains alert to the distinction between individual acts of judgement and historical forces, and repeatedly throughout the History cites moments when a gap opens between them. For judgement to be tasteful, it must both stand apart from history and understand its own determination by the historical forces and contexts that govern its emergence. This double imperative does not amount to a claim that modern enlightenment can never come, only that the present of history and the present of individual judgement may only ‘almost’ fully coincide. This non-coincidence makes Hume’s critical perspective on the ideology of modern progress, liberty, and commercialism possible.Less
In his Essays and The History of England, David Hume portrays individuals’ immediate taste as ‘almost inseparable’from the large historical forces that shape a culture’s progress. In stressing this linkage, Hume helps inspire Scottish Enlightenment historiography, which views advances of liberty, commerce, and taste as integrally joined. But Hume remains alert to the distinction between individual acts of judgement and historical forces, and repeatedly throughout the History cites moments when a gap opens between them. For judgement to be tasteful, it must both stand apart from history and understand its own determination by the historical forces and contexts that govern its emergence. This double imperative does not amount to a claim that modern enlightenment can never come, only that the present of history and the present of individual judgement may only ‘almost’ fully coincide. This non-coincidence makes Hume’s critical perspective on the ideology of modern progress, liberty, and commercialism possible.
John Beer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199574018
- eISBN:
- 9780191723100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574018.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The munificence of the Wedgwood brothers. Coleridge's barbed relationship with James Mackintosh, who had written a spirited defence of the French revolutionaries, but later recanted in an attack ...
More
The munificence of the Wedgwood brothers. Coleridge's barbed relationship with James Mackintosh, who had written a spirited defence of the French revolutionaries, but later recanted in an attack which Godwin regarded as personal. Coleridge's dealings with the Wedgwood family, and with Mackintosh who later married Catherine, the Wedgwoods' sister‐in‐law. His hostility to Mackintosh's philosophy, based on Locke, Hume, and associationism, is accompanied by efforts towards evolving a new way of thinking of his own.Less
The munificence of the Wedgwood brothers. Coleridge's barbed relationship with James Mackintosh, who had written a spirited defence of the French revolutionaries, but later recanted in an attack which Godwin regarded as personal. Coleridge's dealings with the Wedgwood family, and with Mackintosh who later married Catherine, the Wedgwoods' sister‐in‐law. His hostility to Mackintosh's philosophy, based on Locke, Hume, and associationism, is accompanied by efforts towards evolving a new way of thinking of his own.
Jonathan Lamb
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182641
- eISBN:
- 9780191673849
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182641.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The mid-century is a period when the opportunities for the interruption and unfolding of tautologies begin to multiply, and this unfolding attends the collapse of the public and private spheres into ...
More
The mid-century is a period when the opportunities for the interruption and unfolding of tautologies begin to multiply, and this unfolding attends the collapse of the public and private spheres into each other. The public sphere is menaced by the increasing instability of principle — both as a word and an ideal governing the prescriptive relation of concept to action — particularly in the practice of politics and law. In the private sphere individuals are actuated by various empiricist or associationist judgements which fail to account for ideas and feelings in terms of causes rationally disclosed, only in terms of a double pulse in the brain which imparts to customary impressions — that is, to the sense of the same thing happening over again — the reverberative force incident to the enunciation of an irrefragable principle or rule. By means of the echo or spectral blur caused by this double pulse, experience seems haunted by its own revenant, so that an impression can mediate itself, comment on itself, and supply its own grounds of credibility, claiming the status of an antecedent idea as well as of an immediate sensation. In this way, experience compensates for the loss of determining principles of action in the world at large by an illusion bred of custom that gives the particular event access to the general scheme, and endows private testimony with a public dimension. This chapter begins with David Hume, whose writings are devoted to supplanting providential deductions (such as the theodicies of Pope and Young) with inductions based on nothing more authoritative than personal experience.Less
The mid-century is a period when the opportunities for the interruption and unfolding of tautologies begin to multiply, and this unfolding attends the collapse of the public and private spheres into each other. The public sphere is menaced by the increasing instability of principle — both as a word and an ideal governing the prescriptive relation of concept to action — particularly in the practice of politics and law. In the private sphere individuals are actuated by various empiricist or associationist judgements which fail to account for ideas and feelings in terms of causes rationally disclosed, only in terms of a double pulse in the brain which imparts to customary impressions — that is, to the sense of the same thing happening over again — the reverberative force incident to the enunciation of an irrefragable principle or rule. By means of the echo or spectral blur caused by this double pulse, experience seems haunted by its own revenant, so that an impression can mediate itself, comment on itself, and supply its own grounds of credibility, claiming the status of an antecedent idea as well as of an immediate sensation. In this way, experience compensates for the loss of determining principles of action in the world at large by an illusion bred of custom that gives the particular event access to the general scheme, and endows private testimony with a public dimension. This chapter begins with David Hume, whose writings are devoted to supplanting providential deductions (such as the theodicies of Pope and Young) with inductions based on nothing more authoritative than personal experience.
John Mullan
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122524
- eISBN:
- 9780191671449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122524.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
David Hume's reputation as the sardonic analyst of common beliefs, and of religious commitment in particular, has survived his own time to symbolize the iconoclasm of a retrospectively construed ...
More
David Hume's reputation as the sardonic analyst of common beliefs, and of religious commitment in particular, has survived his own time to symbolize the iconoclasm of a retrospectively construed ‘Enlightenment’. Yet he is not merely the reasonable expositor of irrational prejudice, for his earliest and most ambitious work, the Treatise of Human Nature, addresses itself above all to the limitations of reason. As Hume sees it, passions are what drive humans to all action and achievement; reason and passion cannot even properly be seen as contending for domination with each other. Philosophy describes how illusion and imagination are the supports which nature requires, but it is led to admit that nature will always win out in the end. The philosophical project of theorizing sociability, that which sympathy makes possible, is not an isolated one. The universality of social understanding which Hume's philosophy of ‘human nature’ proposes is precisely what is questioned (and typically rejected) in the novel of sentiment.Less
David Hume's reputation as the sardonic analyst of common beliefs, and of religious commitment in particular, has survived his own time to symbolize the iconoclasm of a retrospectively construed ‘Enlightenment’. Yet he is not merely the reasonable expositor of irrational prejudice, for his earliest and most ambitious work, the Treatise of Human Nature, addresses itself above all to the limitations of reason. As Hume sees it, passions are what drive humans to all action and achievement; reason and passion cannot even properly be seen as contending for domination with each other. Philosophy describes how illusion and imagination are the supports which nature requires, but it is led to admit that nature will always win out in the end. The philosophical project of theorizing sociability, that which sympathy makes possible, is not an isolated one. The universality of social understanding which Hume's philosophy of ‘human nature’ proposes is precisely what is questioned (and typically rejected) in the novel of sentiment.
John Mullan
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122524
- eISBN:
- 9780191671449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122524.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
In 1779, there appeared through three consecutive issues of the Edinburgh periodical The Mirror a sentimental tale which became known, and much anthologized, as the ‘Story of La Roche’. It was ...
More
In 1779, there appeared through three consecutive issues of the Edinburgh periodical The Mirror a sentimental tale which became known, and much anthologized, as the ‘Story of La Roche’. It was written by Henry Mackenzie, editor of The Mirror, and a man renowned chiefly for the success of his novel The Man of Feeling. It tells of how an atheistic philosopher living in France meets a clergyman (La Roche) and his daughter, how' he comes to admire their simple virtue, and how, when the daughter dies, he learns to appreciate the combined sensibility and religiosity of the ‘good old man's’ reactions. The sceptical philosopher is made to acknowledge the worth of a religion which ‘was that of sentiment, not theory’. In one way, the story is just a minor relic of sentimentalism. When Mackenzie showed it to Adam Smith, he immediately recognized its subject (or target) as David Hume. In Samuel Richardson's fiction, the enemies to affection, however metaphorical, were clearly and cruelly specified.Less
In 1779, there appeared through three consecutive issues of the Edinburgh periodical The Mirror a sentimental tale which became known, and much anthologized, as the ‘Story of La Roche’. It was written by Henry Mackenzie, editor of The Mirror, and a man renowned chiefly for the success of his novel The Man of Feeling. It tells of how an atheistic philosopher living in France meets a clergyman (La Roche) and his daughter, how' he comes to admire their simple virtue, and how, when the daughter dies, he learns to appreciate the combined sensibility and religiosity of the ‘good old man's’ reactions. The sceptical philosopher is made to acknowledge the worth of a religion which ‘was that of sentiment, not theory’. In one way, the story is just a minor relic of sentimentalism. When Mackenzie showed it to Adam Smith, he immediately recognized its subject (or target) as David Hume. In Samuel Richardson's fiction, the enemies to affection, however metaphorical, were clearly and cruelly specified.
John Mullan
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122524
- eISBN:
- 9780191671449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122524.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter focuses on three very different writers whose works all chronicle peculiarly intimate relationships between the texts they produced and the social lives for which they also became known: ...
More
This chapter focuses on three very different writers whose works all chronicle peculiarly intimate relationships between the texts they produced and the social lives for which they also became known: David Hume, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne. From the perspective of sentimentalism, all were committed to the resources of a language of feeling for the purpose of representing necessary social bonds; all discovered in their writings a sociability which was dependent upon the communication of passions and sentiments. It is this discovery which was formative of that fashion of 18th-century fiction now called ‘sentimental’. For these authors, the conception of harmonious sociability was dramatized not only in the books they produced, but also in their self-conscious efforts actually to live out models of social being. A biography of any of them records the attempt to make exemplary a social life. It might seem a trivial occupation, as the novelistic vogue of sentiment can appear a facile indulgence; both, however, are historically significant, bespeaking the difficulty which a polite culture was having in imagining the nature of social relations.Less
This chapter focuses on three very different writers whose works all chronicle peculiarly intimate relationships between the texts they produced and the social lives for which they also became known: David Hume, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne. From the perspective of sentimentalism, all were committed to the resources of a language of feeling for the purpose of representing necessary social bonds; all discovered in their writings a sociability which was dependent upon the communication of passions and sentiments. It is this discovery which was formative of that fashion of 18th-century fiction now called ‘sentimental’. For these authors, the conception of harmonious sociability was dramatized not only in the books they produced, but also in their self-conscious efforts actually to live out models of social being. A biography of any of them records the attempt to make exemplary a social life. It might seem a trivial occupation, as the novelistic vogue of sentiment can appear a facile indulgence; both, however, are historically significant, bespeaking the difficulty which a polite culture was having in imagining the nature of social relations.
Pat Rogers
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182597
- eISBN:
- 9780191673832
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182597.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter describes the unlikely pairing of Johnson and Omai, the Tahitian brought to England by Cook's party. Omai set out on his long journey to Europe whilst Johnson and Boswell were actually ...
More
This chapter describes the unlikely pairing of Johnson and Omai, the Tahitian brought to England by Cook's party. Omai set out on his long journey to Europe whilst Johnson and Boswell were actually in the midst of their journey, and he became a familiar figure to the Club and what might be termed the extended Johnsonian circle, including Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney. This chapter also discusses the debate about the nature of concepts such as the primitive, the savage, and the barbarian. This was an area of intellectual concern which had become the particular property of Scottish Enlightenment figures, among them David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson.Less
This chapter describes the unlikely pairing of Johnson and Omai, the Tahitian brought to England by Cook's party. Omai set out on his long journey to Europe whilst Johnson and Boswell were actually in the midst of their journey, and he became a familiar figure to the Club and what might be termed the extended Johnsonian circle, including Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney. This chapter also discusses the debate about the nature of concepts such as the primitive, the savage, and the barbarian. This was an area of intellectual concern which had become the particular property of Scottish Enlightenment figures, among them David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson.
Pat Rogers
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182597
- eISBN:
- 9780191673832
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182597.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter deals with Scotticism, which is a markedly idiomatic use of the language by Scots, either in writing or in speech. Boswell was not alone in his worries over Scotticism. It plagued ...
More
This chapter deals with Scotticism, which is a markedly idiomatic use of the language by Scots, either in writing or in speech. Boswell was not alone in his worries over Scotticism. It plagued authors as distinguished as David Hume, and it arrogated the attention of an august body of Edinburgh illuminati known as the Select Society. Nevertheless, Boswell's linguistic worries were compounded by his mixed feelings about his own nationality, as Hume's, for instance, were not. The tour he made with Johnson was, inter alia, a way of testing his own Scottish identity, and only a short step separates issues of linguistic uncertainty from issues of political and cultural nationhood in the aftermath of Culloden.Less
This chapter deals with Scotticism, which is a markedly idiomatic use of the language by Scots, either in writing or in speech. Boswell was not alone in his worries over Scotticism. It plagued authors as distinguished as David Hume, and it arrogated the attention of an august body of Edinburgh illuminati known as the Select Society. Nevertheless, Boswell's linguistic worries were compounded by his mixed feelings about his own nationality, as Hume's, for instance, were not. The tour he made with Johnson was, inter alia, a way of testing his own Scottish identity, and only a short step separates issues of linguistic uncertainty from issues of political and cultural nationhood in the aftermath of Culloden.
Pat Rogers
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182597
- eISBN:
- 9780191673832
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182597.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses the issue hovering behind the Journey — that is, the moral panic which grew up in England in the third quarter of the eighteenth century on the subject of Scottish influence. ...
More
This chapter discusses the issue hovering behind the Journey — that is, the moral panic which grew up in England in the third quarter of the eighteenth century on the subject of Scottish influence. This phase of anti-Scottish feeling is a familiar datum in histories of the period, since it finds expression in diverse fields such as politics, literature, painting, and architecture. But there is no connected treatment of the issue in its most specific aspects when one considers that figures such as David Hume, John Wilkes, the Earl of Bute, Tobias Smollett, and others of comparable stature are involved in the story. More pertinently, there is a direct link here with the content and reception of Johnson's own Journey, and again with Boswell's own anxieties.Less
This chapter discusses the issue hovering behind the Journey — that is, the moral panic which grew up in England in the third quarter of the eighteenth century on the subject of Scottish influence. This phase of anti-Scottish feeling is a familiar datum in histories of the period, since it finds expression in diverse fields such as politics, literature, painting, and architecture. But there is no connected treatment of the issue in its most specific aspects when one considers that figures such as David Hume, John Wilkes, the Earl of Bute, Tobias Smollett, and others of comparable stature are involved in the story. More pertinently, there is a direct link here with the content and reception of Johnson's own Journey, and again with Boswell's own anxieties.
Pamela Clemit
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112204
- eISBN:
- 9780191670701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112204.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
In a more specific account of changes between the first and second editions, William Godwin attributed his recognition of the emotional springs of action to a reading of David Hume's Treatise of ...
More
In a more specific account of changes between the first and second editions, William Godwin attributed his recognition of the emotional springs of action to a reading of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature in 1795. However, in fact his debt to Hume remains ambiguous and difficult to separate from his general assimilation of the ideas of the other British moralists that led him to declare in 1797: ‘Not only the passions of men, but their very judgements, are to a great degree the creatures of sympathy’. Godwin continues to reject Hume's notion of the operation of sympathy through an endless flow of passions and sentiments in which reason is virtually powerless. Instead, crucially for his theory of fiction, he retains his primary commitment to private judgement. The scepticism of Godwin's later studies of character in history both extends and undercuts his early conviction of the intrusion of government into private life.Less
In a more specific account of changes between the first and second editions, William Godwin attributed his recognition of the emotional springs of action to a reading of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature in 1795. However, in fact his debt to Hume remains ambiguous and difficult to separate from his general assimilation of the ideas of the other British moralists that led him to declare in 1797: ‘Not only the passions of men, but their very judgements, are to a great degree the creatures of sympathy’. Godwin continues to reject Hume's notion of the operation of sympathy through an endless flow of passions and sentiments in which reason is virtually powerless. Instead, crucially for his theory of fiction, he retains his primary commitment to private judgement. The scepticism of Godwin's later studies of character in history both extends and undercuts his early conviction of the intrusion of government into private life.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129684
- eISBN:
- 9780191671838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129684.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The most marked trend in the English popular novel of the 1790s is its resolute rationality, its suspicion of the uncontrollable workings of the unconscious mind. No feature is more common in novels ...
More
The most marked trend in the English popular novel of the 1790s is its resolute rationality, its suspicion of the uncontrollable workings of the unconscious mind. No feature is more common in novels of any ideological complexion during the revolutionary era than an unremitting hostility to that central plank of Henry Mackenzie and other leading sentimentalists, the intuitional psychology of David Hartley and David Hume. Conservative critics of the novel see that the true threat to orthodoxy lies in the moral relativism implicit in the sentimental movement. It is therefore cunning of them, though inaccurate, to ascribe to the ‘jacobins’ of the 1790s subjectivity, emotionalism, indulgence towards human weakness, and belief in sexual freedom, all of which the jacobins explicitly renounce. For the time being, the English progressive novelist speaks resolutely to the Reason. Sentimentalism has many critics in the period, but no one who is juster, more penetrating, more whole-hearted, than William Godwin.Less
The most marked trend in the English popular novel of the 1790s is its resolute rationality, its suspicion of the uncontrollable workings of the unconscious mind. No feature is more common in novels of any ideological complexion during the revolutionary era than an unremitting hostility to that central plank of Henry Mackenzie and other leading sentimentalists, the intuitional psychology of David Hartley and David Hume. Conservative critics of the novel see that the true threat to orthodoxy lies in the moral relativism implicit in the sentimental movement. It is therefore cunning of them, though inaccurate, to ascribe to the ‘jacobins’ of the 1790s subjectivity, emotionalism, indulgence towards human weakness, and belief in sexual freedom, all of which the jacobins explicitly renounce. For the time being, the English progressive novelist speaks resolutely to the Reason. Sentimentalism has many critics in the period, but no one who is juster, more penetrating, more whole-hearted, than William Godwin.
Nicholas Hudson
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112143
- eISBN:
- 9780191670671
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112143.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses a re-examination of the question of Samuel Johnson's religious ‘prejudice’. It is believed that this prejudice reflects a profoundly conservative habit of mind typical of the ...
More
This chapter discusses a re-examination of the question of Samuel Johnson's religious ‘prejudice’. It is believed that this prejudice reflects a profoundly conservative habit of mind typical of the orthodoxy that Hume and other sceptics had assailed. One of the questions posed in this chapter is how Christians of Johnson's generation probably viewed Hume's attack at mid-century.Less
This chapter discusses a re-examination of the question of Samuel Johnson's religious ‘prejudice’. It is believed that this prejudice reflects a profoundly conservative habit of mind typical of the orthodoxy that Hume and other sceptics had assailed. One of the questions posed in this chapter is how Christians of Johnson's generation probably viewed Hume's attack at mid-century.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129684
- eISBN:
- 9780191671838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129684.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
As a novelist, Jane Austen draws at large on the literature of her century. She uses the insights and techniques of many earlier writers, not all of whom are by any means conservative. Poets of a ...
More
As a novelist, Jane Austen draws at large on the literature of her century. She uses the insights and techniques of many earlier writers, not all of whom are by any means conservative. Poets of a philosophical temper, like Thomas Gray and William Cowper, historians like David Hume and Edward Gibbon, admire the wise man who stands aside from events both because he cannot influence them, and because they are not worth influencing. Austen's novels contain central characters more given to reflection than fictional heroes and heroines of the first part of the century, and she makes it clear how much she values the probings of the rational moral intelligence. Even the sentimentalists, whom she criticizes both for their opinions and for their execution, presumably bequeathed to her a new awareness of the reader's special relationship with the hero, and an example of how it might be influenced.Less
As a novelist, Jane Austen draws at large on the literature of her century. She uses the insights and techniques of many earlier writers, not all of whom are by any means conservative. Poets of a philosophical temper, like Thomas Gray and William Cowper, historians like David Hume and Edward Gibbon, admire the wise man who stands aside from events both because he cannot influence them, and because they are not worth influencing. Austen's novels contain central characters more given to reflection than fictional heroes and heroines of the first part of the century, and she makes it clear how much she values the probings of the rational moral intelligence. Even the sentimentalists, whom she criticizes both for their opinions and for their execution, presumably bequeathed to her a new awareness of the reader's special relationship with the hero, and an example of how it might be influenced.
FRED PARKER
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199253180
- eISBN:
- 9780191719189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253180.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter expounds on Hume's philosophical scepticism, following Hume himself in the Treatise in emphasizing how sceptical crisis leads, or at least gives way to, the unjustified but saving force ...
More
This chapter expounds on Hume's philosophical scepticism, following Hume himself in the Treatise in emphasizing how sceptical crisis leads, or at least gives way to, the unjustified but saving force of ‘nature’ (custom, convention, instinct). The tension between this philosophy's theoretical subversiveness and its inertness or ‘innocence’ in practice is related to questions of tone and irony and rhetorical self-consciousness in Hume's prose, and so to the kind of teasing social relation he achieves with his readers both implied and actual. In this connection, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion are each discussed and evaluated in turn, the Dialogues being argued to be his masterpiece.Less
This chapter expounds on Hume's philosophical scepticism, following Hume himself in the Treatise in emphasizing how sceptical crisis leads, or at least gives way to, the unjustified but saving force of ‘nature’ (custom, convention, instinct). The tension between this philosophy's theoretical subversiveness and its inertness or ‘innocence’ in practice is related to questions of tone and irony and rhetorical self-consciousness in Hume's prose, and so to the kind of teasing social relation he achieves with his readers both implied and actual. In this connection, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion are each discussed and evaluated in turn, the Dialogues being argued to be his masterpiece.
Emily Rohrbach
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267965
- eISBN:
- 9780823272440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267965.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Chapter one traces the conceptions of the future in historical writing from the mid-eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment to William Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age. In Scottish Enlightenment ...
More
Chapter one traces the conceptions of the future in historical writing from the mid-eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment to William Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age. In Scottish Enlightenment philosophical historiography and thought by David Hume, Hugh Blair, William Robertson and others, one imagines futurity primarily based on precedent. In the 1790s, however, precedent fails to account for the political changes of the moment, as evidenced by the work of William Godwin and Helen Maria Williams. In The Spirit of the Age (1825), William Hazlitt develops a lateral temporal organization and heterogeneous poetics for his work, foregoing not only the explanatory power of precedent but also the Enlightenment necessity of a single, unifying explanatory system.Less
Chapter one traces the conceptions of the future in historical writing from the mid-eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment to William Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age. In Scottish Enlightenment philosophical historiography and thought by David Hume, Hugh Blair, William Robertson and others, one imagines futurity primarily based on precedent. In the 1790s, however, precedent fails to account for the political changes of the moment, as evidenced by the work of William Godwin and Helen Maria Williams. In The Spirit of the Age (1825), William Hazlitt develops a lateral temporal organization and heterogeneous poetics for his work, foregoing not only the explanatory power of precedent but also the Enlightenment necessity of a single, unifying explanatory system.
Peter Otto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199567676
- eISBN:
- 9780191725364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567676.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key ...
More
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key features of gothic fiction: its unprecedented mixing of conventions designed to represent the actual world with those normally deployed to evoke the marvellous; its ability to evoke in readers a powerful sense of the reality of its unreal worlds; and the consequent power of these virtual-realities to rouse the emotions of those who enter them. The argument begins with an account of John Locke's use of the camera obscura and magic lantern to illustrate the distinction between sensation and imagination, reason and passion, the real and the virtual; and it draws on the sensational psychology of David Hume, in which the mind itself is ‘a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance’.Less
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key features of gothic fiction: its unprecedented mixing of conventions designed to represent the actual world with those normally deployed to evoke the marvellous; its ability to evoke in readers a powerful sense of the reality of its unreal worlds; and the consequent power of these virtual-realities to rouse the emotions of those who enter them. The argument begins with an account of John Locke's use of the camera obscura and magic lantern to illustrate the distinction between sensation and imagination, reason and passion, the real and the virtual; and it draws on the sensational psychology of David Hume, in which the mind itself is ‘a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance’.
