Richard Greene
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119883
- eISBN:
- 9780191671234
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119883.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 18th-century Literature
Despite the significant number of labouring poets who published throughout the century, Elizabeth Hands assumed that her social position would constitute an obstacle to the acceptance of her work. ...
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Despite the significant number of labouring poets who published throughout the century, Elizabeth Hands assumed that her social position would constitute an obstacle to the acceptance of her work. Indeed, while she produced some poems of distinct merit, she, like most labouring poets of her time, had been forgotten until the 1980s. Mary Leapor has, of course, fared somewhat better than Hands. Her presence in anthologies and her occasional mention in critical works have sustained a small reputation on the periphery of eighteenth-century literature. This chapter considers Leapor's work against the background of her economic conditions as a kitchen-maid and the daughter of an agricultural craftsman. It is argued that Leapor's work contributes to a fairly broad movement among labouring-class poets to provide an accurate account of work and social conditions in their time.Less
Despite the significant number of labouring poets who published throughout the century, Elizabeth Hands assumed that her social position would constitute an obstacle to the acceptance of her work. Indeed, while she produced some poems of distinct merit, she, like most labouring poets of her time, had been forgotten until the 1980s. Mary Leapor has, of course, fared somewhat better than Hands. Her presence in anthologies and her occasional mention in critical works have sustained a small reputation on the periphery of eighteenth-century literature. This chapter considers Leapor's work against the background of her economic conditions as a kitchen-maid and the daughter of an agricultural craftsman. It is argued that Leapor's work contributes to a fairly broad movement among labouring-class poets to provide an accurate account of work and social conditions in their time.
Richard Greene
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119883
- eISBN:
- 9780191671234
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119883.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 18th-century Literature
The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between ...
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The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between the primitivist theory and actual literary practice was great, it became possible through claims of natural genius for labouring-class poets to command the interest of readers and critics of a higher class. Such claims, of course, usually distorted and, in some cases, entirely misrepresented, the efforts of these poets. This chapter shows that Mary Leapor's education, though haphazard and incomplete, was considerably greater than was admitted at the time of her publication. To describe her as a primitive or a natural genius is a mistake.Less
The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between the primitivist theory and actual literary practice was great, it became possible through claims of natural genius for labouring-class poets to command the interest of readers and critics of a higher class. Such claims, of course, usually distorted and, in some cases, entirely misrepresented, the efforts of these poets. This chapter shows that Mary Leapor's education, though haphazard and incomplete, was considerably greater than was admitted at the time of her publication. To describe her as a primitive or a natural genius is a mistake.
Wendy Laura Belcher
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199793211
- eISBN:
- 9780199949700
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199793211.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
As a very young man, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century translated a tome about Ethiopia. This experience permanently marked Samuel Johnson, leaving traces of the ...
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As a very young man, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century translated a tome about Ethiopia. This experience permanently marked Samuel Johnson, leaving traces of the African discourse he encountered in that text in his drama Irene;several of his short stories; and his most famous fiction, Rasselas. This book provides a much needed perspective in comparative literature and postcolonial studies on the power of the discourse of the other to infuse European texts. This book illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced by developing the powerful metaphor of spirit possession to posit some texts in the European canon as energumens, texts that are spoken through. The model of discursive possession offers a new way of theorizing transcultural intertextuality, in particular how Europe’s others have co-constituted European representations. Through close readings of primary and secondary sources in English, French, Portuguese, and Gəʿəz, the book challenges conventional wisdom on Johnson’s work, from the inspiration for the name Rasselas and the nature of Johnson’s religious beliefs to what makes Rasselas so strange.Less
As a very young man, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century translated a tome about Ethiopia. This experience permanently marked Samuel Johnson, leaving traces of the African discourse he encountered in that text in his drama Irene;several of his short stories; and his most famous fiction, Rasselas. This book provides a much needed perspective in comparative literature and postcolonial studies on the power of the discourse of the other to infuse European texts. This book illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced by developing the powerful metaphor of spirit possession to posit some texts in the European canon as energumens, texts that are spoken through. The model of discursive possession offers a new way of theorizing transcultural intertextuality, in particular how Europe’s others have co-constituted European representations. Through close readings of primary and secondary sources in English, French, Portuguese, and Gəʿəz, the book challenges conventional wisdom on Johnson’s work, from the inspiration for the name Rasselas and the nature of Johnson’s religious beliefs to what makes Rasselas so strange.
Sharada Balachandran Orihuela
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469640921
- eISBN:
- 9781469640945
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469640921.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
In this book, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela examines property ownership and its connections to citizenship, race and slavery, and piracy as seen through the lens of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ...
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In this book, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela examines property ownership and its connections to citizenship, race and slavery, and piracy as seen through the lens of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature. Balachandran Orihuela defines piracy expansively, from the familiar concept of nautical pirates and robbery in international waters to postrevolutionary counterfeiting, transnational slave escape, and the illegal trade of cotton across the Americas during the Civil War. Weaving together close readings of American, Chicano, and African American literature with political theory, the author shows that piracy, when represented through literature, has imagined more inclusive and democratic communities than were then possible in reality. The author shows that these subjects are not taking part in unlawful acts only for economic gain. Rather, Balachandran Orihuela argues that piracy might, surprisingly, have served as a public good, representing a form of transnational belonging that transcends membership in any one nation-state while also functioning as a surrogate to citizenship through the ownership of property. These transnational and transactional forms of social and economic life allow for a better understanding of the foundational importance of property ownership and its role in the creation of citizenship.Less
In this book, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela examines property ownership and its connections to citizenship, race and slavery, and piracy as seen through the lens of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature. Balachandran Orihuela defines piracy expansively, from the familiar concept of nautical pirates and robbery in international waters to postrevolutionary counterfeiting, transnational slave escape, and the illegal trade of cotton across the Americas during the Civil War. Weaving together close readings of American, Chicano, and African American literature with political theory, the author shows that piracy, when represented through literature, has imagined more inclusive and democratic communities than were then possible in reality. The author shows that these subjects are not taking part in unlawful acts only for economic gain. Rather, Balachandran Orihuela argues that piracy might, surprisingly, have served as a public good, representing a form of transnational belonging that transcends membership in any one nation-state while also functioning as a surrogate to citizenship through the ownership of property. These transnational and transactional forms of social and economic life allow for a better understanding of the foundational importance of property ownership and its role in the creation of citizenship.
Jon Mee
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199591749
- eISBN:
- 9780191731433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book addresses the emergence of the idea of ‘the conversation of culture’. Around 1700 a new commercial society was emerging that thought of its values as the product of exchanges between ...
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This book addresses the emergence of the idea of ‘the conversation of culture’. Around 1700 a new commercial society was emerging that thought of its values as the product of exchanges between citizens. Conversation became increasingly important as a model and as a practice for how community could be created. A welter of publications, in periodical essays, in novels, and in poetry, enjoined the virtues of conversation. These publications were enthusiastically read and discussed in book clubs and literary societies that created their own conversable worlds. From some perspectives, the freedom of a distinctively English conversation allowed for the ‘collision’ of ideas and sentiments. For others, like Joseph Addison and David Hume, ease of ‘flow’ was the key issue, and politeness the means of establishing a via media. For Addison and Hume, the feminization of culture promised to make women the sovereigns of what Hume called ‘the conversable world’. As the culture seemed to open up to a multitude of voices, anxieties appeared as to how far things should be allowed to go. The unruliness of the crowd threatened to disrupt the channels of communication. There was a parallel fear that mere feminized chatter might replace learning. This book examines the influence of these developments on the idea of literature from 1762 through to 1830. Part I examines the conversational paradigm established by figures like Addison and Hume, and the proliferation of conversable worlds into gatherings like Johnson's Club and Montagu's Bluestocking assemblies. Part II looks at the transition from the eighteenth century to ‘Romantic’ ideas of literary culture, the question of the withdrawal from mixed social space, the drive to sublimate verbal exchange into forms that retained dialogue without contention in places like Coleridge's ‘conversation poems,’ and the continuing tensions between ideas of the republic of letters as a space of vigorous exchange as opposed to the organic unfolding of consciousness.Less
This book addresses the emergence of the idea of ‘the conversation of culture’. Around 1700 a new commercial society was emerging that thought of its values as the product of exchanges between citizens. Conversation became increasingly important as a model and as a practice for how community could be created. A welter of publications, in periodical essays, in novels, and in poetry, enjoined the virtues of conversation. These publications were enthusiastically read and discussed in book clubs and literary societies that created their own conversable worlds. From some perspectives, the freedom of a distinctively English conversation allowed for the ‘collision’ of ideas and sentiments. For others, like Joseph Addison and David Hume, ease of ‘flow’ was the key issue, and politeness the means of establishing a via media. For Addison and Hume, the feminization of culture promised to make women the sovereigns of what Hume called ‘the conversable world’. As the culture seemed to open up to a multitude of voices, anxieties appeared as to how far things should be allowed to go. The unruliness of the crowd threatened to disrupt the channels of communication. There was a parallel fear that mere feminized chatter might replace learning. This book examines the influence of these developments on the idea of literature from 1762 through to 1830. Part I examines the conversational paradigm established by figures like Addison and Hume, and the proliferation of conversable worlds into gatherings like Johnson's Club and Montagu's Bluestocking assemblies. Part II looks at the transition from the eighteenth century to ‘Romantic’ ideas of literary culture, the question of the withdrawal from mixed social space, the drive to sublimate verbal exchange into forms that retained dialogue without contention in places like Coleridge's ‘conversation poems,’ and the continuing tensions between ideas of the republic of letters as a space of vigorous exchange as opposed to the organic unfolding of consciousness.
Thomas Keymer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- December 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198744498
- eISBN:
- 9780191816314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198744498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, ‘English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government’. It’s ...
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On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, ‘English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government’. It’s certainly true that the system of prior restraint enshrined in this Restoration measure was now at an end, at least for print. Yet the same cannot be said of government control, which came to operate instead by means of post-publication retribution, not pre-publication licensing, notably for the common-law offence of seditious libel. For many of the authors affected, from Defoe to Cobbett, this new regime was a greater constraint on expression than the old, not least for its alarming unpredictability, and for the spectacular punishment—the pillory—that was sometimes entailed. Yet we may also see the constraint as an energizing force. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the Romantic period, writers developed and refined ingenious techniques for communicating dissident or otherwise contentious meanings while rendering the meanings deniable. As a work of both history and criticism, this book traces the rise and fall of seditious libel prosecution, and with it the theatre of the pillory, while arguing that the period’s characteristic forms of literary complexity—ambiguity, ellipsis, indirection, irony—may be traced to the persistence of censorship in the post-licensing world. The argument proceeds through case studies of major poets and prose writers including Dryden, Defoe, Pope, Fielding, Johnson, and Southey, and also calls attention to numerous little-known satires and libels across the extended period.Less
On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, ‘English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government’. It’s certainly true that the system of prior restraint enshrined in this Restoration measure was now at an end, at least for print. Yet the same cannot be said of government control, which came to operate instead by means of post-publication retribution, not pre-publication licensing, notably for the common-law offence of seditious libel. For many of the authors affected, from Defoe to Cobbett, this new regime was a greater constraint on expression than the old, not least for its alarming unpredictability, and for the spectacular punishment—the pillory—that was sometimes entailed. Yet we may also see the constraint as an energizing force. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the Romantic period, writers developed and refined ingenious techniques for communicating dissident or otherwise contentious meanings while rendering the meanings deniable. As a work of both history and criticism, this book traces the rise and fall of seditious libel prosecution, and with it the theatre of the pillory, while arguing that the period’s characteristic forms of literary complexity—ambiguity, ellipsis, indirection, irony—may be traced to the persistence of censorship in the post-licensing world. The argument proceeds through case studies of major poets and prose writers including Dryden, Defoe, Pope, Fielding, Johnson, and Southey, and also calls attention to numerous little-known satires and libels across the extended period.
Angela Calcaterra
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646947
- eISBN:
- 9781469646961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646947.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
Chapter 1 traces intersections between Indigenous maps in the early eighteenth-century colonial southeast and William Byrd II’s History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina ...
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Chapter 1 traces intersections between Indigenous maps in the early eighteenth-century colonial southeast and William Byrd II’s History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (written in the years following the 1728 boundary-line survey). It shows that the creation of an Anglo-American colonial border and a text considered highly literary cannot be separated from the real and figurative lines Catawba, Cherokee, Weyanoke, and other Native people drew to distinguish polities in the region. Native peoples’ maps, narratives, and political assertions of space and relations shaped the Virginia-North Carolina boundary dispute and survey at every turn, contributing to the meandering form of Byrd’s History, a text he never completed to his satisfaction. Native creative practices were central to colonial American literatures of space and place.Less
Chapter 1 traces intersections between Indigenous maps in the early eighteenth-century colonial southeast and William Byrd II’s History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (written in the years following the 1728 boundary-line survey). It shows that the creation of an Anglo-American colonial border and a text considered highly literary cannot be separated from the real and figurative lines Catawba, Cherokee, Weyanoke, and other Native people drew to distinguish polities in the region. Native peoples’ maps, narratives, and political assertions of space and relations shaped the Virginia-North Carolina boundary dispute and survey at every turn, contributing to the meandering form of Byrd’s History, a text he never completed to his satisfaction. Native creative practices were central to colonial American literatures of space and place.
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
How did Alexander Pope become the greatest poet of the eighteenth century? Drawing on previously neglected texts and overlooked archival materials, Alexander Pope in the Making provides a radical new ...
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How did Alexander Pope become the greatest poet of the eighteenth century? Drawing on previously neglected texts and overlooked archival materials, Alexander Pope in the Making provides a radical new account of the poet’s early career, from the earliest traces of manuscript circulation to the publication of his collected Works. Joseph Hone illuminates classic poems such as An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, and Windsor-Forest by setting them alongside lesser-known texts by Pope and his contemporaries, many of which have never received sustained critical attention before. Pope’s earliest experiments in satire, panegyric, lyric, pastoral, and epic are all explored alongside his translations, publication strategies, and neglected editorial projects. By recovering cultural values shared by Pope and the politically heterodox men and women whose works he read and with whom he collaborated, Hone unearths powerful new interpretive possibilities for some of the eighteenth century’s most celebrated poems. Alexander Pope in the Making mounts a comprehensive challenge to the ‘Scriblerian’ paradigm that has dominated scholarship for the past eighty years. It sheds fresh light on Pope’s early career and reshapes our understanding of the ideological landscape of his era. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of eighteenth-century literature, history, and politics.Less
How did Alexander Pope become the greatest poet of the eighteenth century? Drawing on previously neglected texts and overlooked archival materials, Alexander Pope in the Making provides a radical new account of the poet’s early career, from the earliest traces of manuscript circulation to the publication of his collected Works. Joseph Hone illuminates classic poems such as An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, and Windsor-Forest by setting them alongside lesser-known texts by Pope and his contemporaries, many of which have never received sustained critical attention before. Pope’s earliest experiments in satire, panegyric, lyric, pastoral, and epic are all explored alongside his translations, publication strategies, and neglected editorial projects. By recovering cultural values shared by Pope and the politically heterodox men and women whose works he read and with whom he collaborated, Hone unearths powerful new interpretive possibilities for some of the eighteenth century’s most celebrated poems. Alexander Pope in the Making mounts a comprehensive challenge to the ‘Scriblerian’ paradigm that has dominated scholarship for the past eighty years. It sheds fresh light on Pope’s early career and reshapes our understanding of the ideological landscape of his era. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of eighteenth-century literature, history, and politics.
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter considers Pope’s most important early poem, Windsor-Forest, as a panegyric to Stuart monarchy. It traces the textual history of Windsor-Forest and investigates moments of contact between ...
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This chapter considers Pope’s most important early poem, Windsor-Forest, as a panegyric to Stuart monarchy. It traces the textual history of Windsor-Forest and investigates moments of contact between this poem and others by Pope’s friends and contemporaries, including Diaper, Higgons, Finch, Granville, and John Philips. It begins by exploring the enduring appeal of Stuart panegyric and the common motif of the renewed golden age before moving on to examine two of the most famous conceits of the poem: a fiat and a metamorphosis. Those motifs were frequently deployed by Pope’s contemporaries to reflect on current theories of monarchy. By studying the development of Windsor-Forest in context—and alongside parallel developments in contemporary politics—this chapter begins to explain when and why Pope’s political outlook turned from confidence to anxiety and disaffection.Less
This chapter considers Pope’s most important early poem, Windsor-Forest, as a panegyric to Stuart monarchy. It traces the textual history of Windsor-Forest and investigates moments of contact between this poem and others by Pope’s friends and contemporaries, including Diaper, Higgons, Finch, Granville, and John Philips. It begins by exploring the enduring appeal of Stuart panegyric and the common motif of the renewed golden age before moving on to examine two of the most famous conceits of the poem: a fiat and a metamorphosis. Those motifs were frequently deployed by Pope’s contemporaries to reflect on current theories of monarchy. By studying the development of Windsor-Forest in context—and alongside parallel developments in contemporary politics—this chapter begins to explain when and why Pope’s political outlook turned from confidence to anxiety and disaffection.
Leya Landau
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474435734
- eISBN:
- 9781474453721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474435734.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Better known for her literary representations of Georgian London, Fanny Burney’s final, post-revolutionary novel, The Wanderer (1814), extends a more complex and radical geography than her earlier ...
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Better known for her literary representations of Georgian London, Fanny Burney’s final, post-revolutionary novel, The Wanderer (1814), extends a more complex and radical geography than her earlier works. Opening on a rough sea off the coast of France, the mysterious protagonist, Ellis/Juliet, feels the gravitational pull of Brighthelmstone (Brighton), the celebrated Regency seaside town that provides the setting for most of the novel. This chapter examines the representation of Brighton in The Wanderer, a novel in which the inhabitants of Brighthelmstone quite literally turn their back on the ocean, alongside Burney’s descriptions of the town in her private writings over a number of decades. What emerges from these different genres is a double vision of Brighton that counters contemporary and popular depictions of the town in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.Less
Better known for her literary representations of Georgian London, Fanny Burney’s final, post-revolutionary novel, The Wanderer (1814), extends a more complex and radical geography than her earlier works. Opening on a rough sea off the coast of France, the mysterious protagonist, Ellis/Juliet, feels the gravitational pull of Brighthelmstone (Brighton), the celebrated Regency seaside town that provides the setting for most of the novel. This chapter examines the representation of Brighton in The Wanderer, a novel in which the inhabitants of Brighthelmstone quite literally turn their back on the ocean, alongside Burney’s descriptions of the town in her private writings over a number of decades. What emerges from these different genres is a double vision of Brighton that counters contemporary and popular depictions of the town in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Jan-Melissa Schramm
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198826064
- eISBN:
- 9780191878176
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198826064.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
In the early nineteenth century, the biblical sublime found expression in the visual arts, the novel, the oratorio, and poetry, but spoken drama remained secular by force of precedent and law. The ...
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In the early nineteenth century, the biblical sublime found expression in the visual arts, the novel, the oratorio, and poetry, but spoken drama remained secular by force of precedent and law. The maintenance of this ban on religious theatrical representation was underpinned by Protestant anxieties about impersonation, performance, and the power of the image that persisted long after the Reformation. But by mid-century, the turn towards medievalism in visual culture, antiquarianism in literary history, and the ‘popular’ in constitutional reform placed England’s pre-Reformation past at the centre of debates about the uses of the public stage and the functions of a truly national theatrical literature. In this changing climate, how was England’s rich heritage of vernacular sacred drama to be understood? This book probes the tensions inherent in the idea of ‘incarnational art’—whether, after the Reformation, ‘presence’ was only to be conjured up in the mind’s eye by the act of reading, or whether drama could rightfully reclaim all the implications of ‘incarnation’ understood in the Christian tradition as ‘the word made flesh’. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 describe the recovery of the medieval mystery plays and their subsequent impact on the national imagination. The second half of the book looks at the gradual relaxation of the ban on the performance of sacred drama and asks whether Christian theatre can ever be truly tragic, whether art perpetually reanimates or appropriates sacred ideas, and whether there is any place for sacramental thought in a post-Darwinian, industrial age.Less
In the early nineteenth century, the biblical sublime found expression in the visual arts, the novel, the oratorio, and poetry, but spoken drama remained secular by force of precedent and law. The maintenance of this ban on religious theatrical representation was underpinned by Protestant anxieties about impersonation, performance, and the power of the image that persisted long after the Reformation. But by mid-century, the turn towards medievalism in visual culture, antiquarianism in literary history, and the ‘popular’ in constitutional reform placed England’s pre-Reformation past at the centre of debates about the uses of the public stage and the functions of a truly national theatrical literature. In this changing climate, how was England’s rich heritage of vernacular sacred drama to be understood? This book probes the tensions inherent in the idea of ‘incarnational art’—whether, after the Reformation, ‘presence’ was only to be conjured up in the mind’s eye by the act of reading, or whether drama could rightfully reclaim all the implications of ‘incarnation’ understood in the Christian tradition as ‘the word made flesh’. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 describe the recovery of the medieval mystery plays and their subsequent impact on the national imagination. The second half of the book looks at the gradual relaxation of the ban on the performance of sacred drama and asks whether Christian theatre can ever be truly tragic, whether art perpetually reanimates or appropriates sacred ideas, and whether there is any place for sacramental thought in a post-Darwinian, industrial age.
Robin Runia
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940520
- eISBN:
- 9781789629170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940520.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within ...
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Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within the frame of late eighteenth-century definitions of hypochondriasis, which firmly associated the condition not just with the indolence of the wealthy but also with a foreign decadence. Trying to rid himself of his ennui, Glenthorn trials numerous fashionable activities of the wealthy but finds consolation only in the domestic sphere and the peaceable routines of his servants. Ennui is Edgeworth’s critique of the ‘rampant moral plague of luxury’, but, more importantly in offering a domestic remedy based on duty and the importance of home, it associates the health of the male body with the knowledge and culture of women.Less
Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within the frame of late eighteenth-century definitions of hypochondriasis, which firmly associated the condition not just with the indolence of the wealthy but also with a foreign decadence. Trying to rid himself of his ennui, Glenthorn trials numerous fashionable activities of the wealthy but finds consolation only in the domestic sphere and the peaceable routines of his servants. Ennui is Edgeworth’s critique of the ‘rampant moral plague of luxury’, but, more importantly in offering a domestic remedy based on duty and the importance of home, it associates the health of the male body with the knowledge and culture of women.
Leigh Wetherall-Dickson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940520
- eISBN:
- 9781789629170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940520.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This essay considers the stain on one’s position within civil society represented by venereal disease. Drawing on the diaries of Boswell – for whom regular doses of syphilis seem to have been ...
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This essay considers the stain on one’s position within civil society represented by venereal disease. Drawing on the diaries of Boswell – for whom regular doses of syphilis seem to have been regarded as an amatory hazard – and Neville, the essay explores the increasing prominence and importance of the sphere of sociable intercourse in the eighteenth century, which necessitates, for Boswell at least, a clear division between his private selfhood and conduct and his public demeanour. In contrast, Neville’s episodes of the pox seem to have exacerbated his incipient paranoia and annoyance with a world around him that refuses to acknowledge his gentlemanly qualities. Both men’s reaction to their condition as related through their diaries reveals for Leigh Wetherall-Dickson a shifting notion of private identity formed in response to the relatively new phenomenon of sociable intercourse.Less
This essay considers the stain on one’s position within civil society represented by venereal disease. Drawing on the diaries of Boswell – for whom regular doses of syphilis seem to have been regarded as an amatory hazard – and Neville, the essay explores the increasing prominence and importance of the sphere of sociable intercourse in the eighteenth century, which necessitates, for Boswell at least, a clear division between his private selfhood and conduct and his public demeanour. In contrast, Neville’s episodes of the pox seem to have exacerbated his incipient paranoia and annoyance with a world around him that refuses to acknowledge his gentlemanly qualities. Both men’s reaction to their condition as related through their diaries reveals for Leigh Wetherall-Dickson a shifting notion of private identity formed in response to the relatively new phenomenon of sociable intercourse.
Alex Eric Hernandez
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198846574
- eISBN:
- 9780191881657
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198846574.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This book assembles a body of print and performance concerned with the misfortunes of the middling sort, arguing that these works negotiated tragedy’s vexed relationship to ordinary life. This ...
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This book assembles a body of print and performance concerned with the misfortunes of the middling sort, arguing that these works negotiated tragedy’s vexed relationship to ordinary life. This “bourgeois and domestic tragedy” imagined a particularly modern sort of affliction, an “ordinary suffering” divested of the sorts of meanings, rhetorics, and affective resonances once deployed to understand it. Whereas neoclassical aesthetics aligned tragedy with the heroic and the admirable, bourgeois tragedy treated the pain of common people with dignity and seriousness, meditating upon a suffering that was homely, familiar, realistic, and entangled in the nascent values of capitalism, yet no less haunted by God. Hence, where many have seen aesthetic stagnation, misfiring emotion, and the absence of an idealized tragicness in the genre, this book tracks instead a sustained engagement in the emotional processes and representational techniques through which the middle rank feels its way into modernity. Describing this shift as an episode in the histories of both tragedy and emotion, it revises the standard critical account of eighteenth-century tragedy and reads the genre’s emergence in the period as a vigorous cultural conversation over whose life—and whose way of life—is grievable, as well as how that mourning might be performed.Less
This book assembles a body of print and performance concerned with the misfortunes of the middling sort, arguing that these works negotiated tragedy’s vexed relationship to ordinary life. This “bourgeois and domestic tragedy” imagined a particularly modern sort of affliction, an “ordinary suffering” divested of the sorts of meanings, rhetorics, and affective resonances once deployed to understand it. Whereas neoclassical aesthetics aligned tragedy with the heroic and the admirable, bourgeois tragedy treated the pain of common people with dignity and seriousness, meditating upon a suffering that was homely, familiar, realistic, and entangled in the nascent values of capitalism, yet no less haunted by God. Hence, where many have seen aesthetic stagnation, misfiring emotion, and the absence of an idealized tragicness in the genre, this book tracks instead a sustained engagement in the emotional processes and representational techniques through which the middle rank feels its way into modernity. Describing this shift as an episode in the histories of both tragedy and emotion, it revises the standard critical account of eighteenth-century tragedy and reads the genre’s emergence in the period as a vigorous cultural conversation over whose life—and whose way of life—is grievable, as well as how that mourning might be performed.
Martha Vandrei
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198816720
- eISBN:
- 9780191858352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816720.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Historiography
This chapter focuses on the boundaries between historical and political argument. It discusses the different ways that British antiquity could be politicized by historical writers of the eighteenth ...
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This chapter focuses on the boundaries between historical and political argument. It discusses the different ways that British antiquity could be politicized by historical writers of the eighteenth century. However, despite this, Boudica maintained a patriotic detachment from party fracases in prose literature. This is compared to her presentation in Richard Glover’s new play of 1753. Aside from questions of patriotism, Glover’s play brings to the fore drama’s relationship to history, and especially the fidelity to human nature that was demanded of both genres. Glover’s inability to accurately capture the spectrum of human emotions attracted extensive criticism, demonstrating another measure of ‘accuracy’ contemporaries applied to historical writing. With regards to Boudica herself, this chapter begins to consolidate the argument that Boudica’s reputation was rather more durable and positive than previous scholars have allowed.Less
This chapter focuses on the boundaries between historical and political argument. It discusses the different ways that British antiquity could be politicized by historical writers of the eighteenth century. However, despite this, Boudica maintained a patriotic detachment from party fracases in prose literature. This is compared to her presentation in Richard Glover’s new play of 1753. Aside from questions of patriotism, Glover’s play brings to the fore drama’s relationship to history, and especially the fidelity to human nature that was demanded of both genres. Glover’s inability to accurately capture the spectrum of human emotions attracted extensive criticism, demonstrating another measure of ‘accuracy’ contemporaries applied to historical writing. With regards to Boudica herself, this chapter begins to consolidate the argument that Boudica’s reputation was rather more durable and positive than previous scholars have allowed.
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
When and how did Pope become the literary colossus we know today? Until now scholars of Pope’s early career have focused on his involvement with the so-called ‘Scriblerus Club’ comprising Swift, ...
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When and how did Pope become the literary colossus we know today? Until now scholars of Pope’s early career have focused on his involvement with the so-called ‘Scriblerus Club’ comprising Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Parnell, and the circles of famous authors such as Joseph Addison and William Wycherley. This introduction begins by setting out a new context for understanding Pope’s early career: in the literary circles dominated by the Duke of Buckingham and his friends. It then explains the holistic methodological approach of the book and how its questions intersect with existing scholarship on Pope and his world. This is followed by a brief outline of the chapters.Less
When and how did Pope become the literary colossus we know today? Until now scholars of Pope’s early career have focused on his involvement with the so-called ‘Scriblerus Club’ comprising Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Parnell, and the circles of famous authors such as Joseph Addison and William Wycherley. This introduction begins by setting out a new context for understanding Pope’s early career: in the literary circles dominated by the Duke of Buckingham and his friends. It then explains the holistic methodological approach of the book and how its questions intersect with existing scholarship on Pope and his world. This is followed by a brief outline of the chapters.
Lesley A. Hall
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940520
- eISBN:
- 9781789629170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940520.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Lesley A. Hall examines the fear of the sexualised male body as a vector for diseases capable of disrupting both familial and social dynamics. While academic research has tended to focus on the ...
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Lesley A. Hall examines the fear of the sexualised male body as a vector for diseases capable of disrupting both familial and social dynamics. While academic research has tended to focus on the potential for damage caused by the sexually diseased female body, Hall redresses the balance by considering the pariah status attributed to those, such as soldiers and sailors, considered to be over-sexed or lacking in self-control. But the prejudice was extended to those men in general society either afflicted by syphilis or gonorrhoea or regarded as threatening through their moral laxity the reproductive healthiness of family life. Hall shows how this threat became increasingly public in wider culture during the last decades of the nineteenth century, bringing about both general condemnation and legislative amendment. Reinforcing such anxieties about wayward male concupiscence was an equally virulent condemnation of masturbation as consciously self-harming. Hall asserts that masturbation was considered more than a personal vice, being viewed as potentially contaminative – seminal loss producing not just a range of frightful pathologies for the individual but a transmission of harmful agents to others.Less
Lesley A. Hall examines the fear of the sexualised male body as a vector for diseases capable of disrupting both familial and social dynamics. While academic research has tended to focus on the potential for damage caused by the sexually diseased female body, Hall redresses the balance by considering the pariah status attributed to those, such as soldiers and sailors, considered to be over-sexed or lacking in self-control. But the prejudice was extended to those men in general society either afflicted by syphilis or gonorrhoea or regarded as threatening through their moral laxity the reproductive healthiness of family life. Hall shows how this threat became increasingly public in wider culture during the last decades of the nineteenth century, bringing about both general condemnation and legislative amendment. Reinforcing such anxieties about wayward male concupiscence was an equally virulent condemnation of masturbation as consciously self-harming. Hall asserts that masturbation was considered more than a personal vice, being viewed as potentially contaminative – seminal loss producing not just a range of frightful pathologies for the individual but a transmission of harmful agents to others.
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Pope’s earliest poems emerged from his various childhood and teenage relationships. For whom did he write those poems and by whom were they read? This chapter investigates Pope’s early social milieu ...
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Pope’s earliest poems emerged from his various childhood and teenage relationships. For whom did he write those poems and by whom were they read? This chapter investigates Pope’s early social milieu through a focus on two specific communities: the Catholic diaspora of the Thames Valley and the friends of the late John Dryden, including Buckingham, Granville, St John, and Higgons. It traces Pope’s earliest contact with those figures and their influence on his poems. Reconstructing Pope’s connections to these circles provides essential context for understanding his early literary development. It also enables new understanding of his political awakening as a teenager. The final section of the chapter examines An Essay on Criticism (1711) within the context of similar poems by Buckingham and Granville, notably An Essay upon Satire (1679), An Essay upon Poetry (1682), and An Essay on Unnatural Flights in Poetry (1701). By ignoring Buckingham and Granville as irrelevant and second-rate authors, previous scholars have overlooked the fact that their poems were Pope’s principal generic models for the EssayLess
Pope’s earliest poems emerged from his various childhood and teenage relationships. For whom did he write those poems and by whom were they read? This chapter investigates Pope’s early social milieu through a focus on two specific communities: the Catholic diaspora of the Thames Valley and the friends of the late John Dryden, including Buckingham, Granville, St John, and Higgons. It traces Pope’s earliest contact with those figures and their influence on his poems. Reconstructing Pope’s connections to these circles provides essential context for understanding his early literary development. It also enables new understanding of his political awakening as a teenager. The final section of the chapter examines An Essay on Criticism (1711) within the context of similar poems by Buckingham and Granville, notably An Essay upon Satire (1679), An Essay upon Poetry (1682), and An Essay on Unnatural Flights in Poetry (1701). By ignoring Buckingham and Granville as irrelevant and second-rate authors, previous scholars have overlooked the fact that their poems were Pope’s principal generic models for the Essay
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter addresses Pope’s hitherto neglected use of miscellany publication. With the exceptions of An Essay on Criticism, The Temple of Fame, and Windsor-Forest, all Pope’s early printed poems ...
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This chapter addresses Pope’s hitherto neglected use of miscellany publication. With the exceptions of An Essay on Criticism, The Temple of Fame, and Windsor-Forest, all Pope’s early printed poems first appeared in miscellanies or periodicals. Three miscellanies are of particular importance: the sixth and final volume of Jacob Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies (1709), Bernard Lintot’s Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1712), and Poems on Several Occasions (1717), also published by Lintot. A section is devoted to each of those miscellanies. Pope made his public print debut in the first one, was the guiding spirit behind the second, and the editor of the third. In his roles as contributor and editor, Pope encouraged friends to contribute to the collections too, dragging them from the world of clandestine scribal publication into that of print. The chapter scrutinizes the content surrounding Pope’s poems in these miscellanies and teases out the sophisticated political resonances of those texts. By 1717 Pope had transformed the miscellany from a mere vessel for minor occasional verse into a focal point for dissident wits who otherwise wrote principally for scribal publication.Less
This chapter addresses Pope’s hitherto neglected use of miscellany publication. With the exceptions of An Essay on Criticism, The Temple of Fame, and Windsor-Forest, all Pope’s early printed poems first appeared in miscellanies or periodicals. Three miscellanies are of particular importance: the sixth and final volume of Jacob Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies (1709), Bernard Lintot’s Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1712), and Poems on Several Occasions (1717), also published by Lintot. A section is devoted to each of those miscellanies. Pope made his public print debut in the first one, was the guiding spirit behind the second, and the editor of the third. In his roles as contributor and editor, Pope encouraged friends to contribute to the collections too, dragging them from the world of clandestine scribal publication into that of print. The chapter scrutinizes the content surrounding Pope’s poems in these miscellanies and teases out the sophisticated political resonances of those texts. By 1717 Pope had transformed the miscellany from a mere vessel for minor occasional verse into a focal point for dissident wits who otherwise wrote principally for scribal publication.
Joseph Hone
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198842316
- eISBN:
- 9780191878312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842316.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter challenges enduring assumptions about Pope’s early uses of scribal publication. Drawing on a wealth of famous and hitherto overlooked or unknown manuscript sources, it reconstructs the ...
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This chapter challenges enduring assumptions about Pope’s early uses of scribal publication. Drawing on a wealth of famous and hitherto overlooked or unknown manuscript sources, it reconstructs the early circulation of Pope’s poems. The chapter explores the methods by which Pope’s fair copy holographs circulated among select readers and, in the second section, examine important differences between the manuscript and printed texts of his poems. The third section traces the distribution of his early poems in contemporary manuscript miscellanies. Pope’s earliest manuscript readers, it argues, viewed him as the latest addition to a grand tradition of seventeenth-century royalist poetry. The last section of the chapter investigates what remains of Pope’s juvenile epic, Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. Tracing the textual history of the Alcander manuscript from its origins in 1701 to its destruction in 1717, it argues that the poem’s non-appearance in print was probably due to political factors rather than literary ones.Less
This chapter challenges enduring assumptions about Pope’s early uses of scribal publication. Drawing on a wealth of famous and hitherto overlooked or unknown manuscript sources, it reconstructs the early circulation of Pope’s poems. The chapter explores the methods by which Pope’s fair copy holographs circulated among select readers and, in the second section, examine important differences between the manuscript and printed texts of his poems. The third section traces the distribution of his early poems in contemporary manuscript miscellanies. Pope’s earliest manuscript readers, it argues, viewed him as the latest addition to a grand tradition of seventeenth-century royalist poetry. The last section of the chapter investigates what remains of Pope’s juvenile epic, Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. Tracing the textual history of the Alcander manuscript from its origins in 1701 to its destruction in 1717, it argues that the poem’s non-appearance in print was probably due to political factors rather than literary ones.