An indispensable reference for scholars and students of eighteenth-century English literature
This addition to the celebrated Wiley-Blackwell Keywords series explores the meanings of fifty-eight of the most important words in British literature of the period 1640-1789. Professor De Maria focuses on words used with frequency and urgency throughout the works of most major and several minor writers of the British Neoclassical era, with the occasional reach back to the early seventeenth century for a definitive usage found in Francis Bacon, for instance, and look forward to the nineteenth century to the works of Wordsworth, Austen, and Keats. Through discussions of words such as atom, economy, humanity, labor, machine, slavery, society, and system he reveals underlying assumptions about the way writers of the period thought about the physical and social world. Likewise, considerations of words such as happiness, passion, truth, and virtue shed light on the ethical and moral commitments of the age. Unlike dictionaries and many big-data semantics projects, this book brings forth the ambiguities, nuances, and ironies that accrued to word usages during the period through a heightened awareness of the contexts in which they occurred.
* Highlights and exposes the salient cultural and literary debates and metamorphic moments of cultural thought
* Reveals an increase in irony and a decrease in allegorical usage as an important trend in the evolution of literary language during the Neoclassical period
* Stresses the contexts within which words or phrases appear in order to offer a fuller understanding of their meanings and significance than available from digital databases
* Draws upon a vast compilation of sources from one of the most transformative eras of English literature
Rigorous in its scholarship and historical reach, British Literature 1640-1789: Keywords is an indispensable resource which scholars and students of British Neoclassical literature will want to keep close at hand. It is certain to become a fixture of most university reference libraries.
Tabla de materias
Note on References ix
Short Titles and Abbreviations x
Introduction xii
A 1
Address 1
Admiration and Wonder 5
Advancement 7
Ardor 10
Atheism 13
Atom 16
Attention 21
B 25
Barbarism 25
Beauty 27
Belief 31
Business 35
C 39
Conversation 39
D 43
Domestic 43
E 47
Economy 47
Enthusiasm 50
Expedient 54
Experience 57
F 61
Fortune 61
G 67
Genius 67
God 70
Grubstreet 75
H 79
Happiness 79
Humanity 85
I 89
Idea 89
Imagination 93
J 98
Judgment 98
L 102
Labor 102
Learning and Literature 106
Life 110
M 116
Machine and Engine 116
Man 120
Melancholy 123
Modern 126
N 130
National 130
Nature 133
News 139
Nice 142
Novel 144
P 148
Passion 148
Patriot 152
Philosophy 155
Pride 158
Primitive 163
R 168
Reason 168
Revolution 173
Romance 177
S 181
Savage 181
Science 184
Sensibility 188
Slavery 192
Society 195
Spleen 199
System 201
T 205
Truth 205
V 211
Virtue 211
W 218
War 218
Wit 222
Woman 225
World 229
Index 235
Sobre el autor
Robert De Maria, Jr. is the Henry Noble Mac Cracken Professor of English Literature at Vassar College where he has taught since 1975. He is the author of three monographs on Samuel Johnson and the general editor of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, in which he has co-edited three volumes. He has also edited and co-edited several collections for Wiley Blackwell, including British Literature 1640-1789, 4th Edition; Classical Literature and Its Reception; and The Blackwell Guide to British Literature.
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