Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820Princeton University Press, 2000 M05 1 - 369 pages A deepening interest in both social and interior experience was a distinguishing feature of the cultural life of eighteenth-century Britain, influencing writers in all genres from fiction to philosophy. Focusing on this interplay of ideas and genres, Mark Phillips explores the ways in which writers and readers of history, memoir, biography and related literatures responded to the social and sentimental concerns of a modern, commercial society. He shows that the writing of history, which once concentrated exclusively on political events, widened its horizons in ways that often paralleled better-known developments in the contemporary novel. Ultimately, Phillips proposes a new model for the study of historiographical narrative. Countering tropological readings identified with Hayden White, he offers a more historically nuanced approach that stresses questions of genre and reception as a guide to understanding how narratives were reshaped by new audiences and new social needs. |
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... only Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon are mentioned. Of these, only Hume is discussed at any length, and his work is represented by the Treatise, not the History of England. Among exceptions to the general lack of interest in PREFACE xiii.
... England. Among exceptions to the general lack of interest in practical criticism of historiographi- cal texts, see Leo Braudy, Hume, Fielding, and Gibbon (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970); and W. B. Carnochan, Gibbon's Solitude (Palo Alto ...
... England (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978). 5 As we have already seen in Austen,s comments, interest in the history of manners was a prime element in the appreciation of Henry,s work. See, for example, the appreciative comments of Joseph ...
... England, 1759–1800 (New York: Oxford UP, 1992); Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993); Trevor Ross, “Copyright and the Invention of Tradition,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 26 (1992): 1–27 ...
... England's weakness in historical writing, but by the later decades of the century a rapidly formed consensus confidently declared that Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon had removed this stigma.17 We need both to take note of the sources of ...
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Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820 Mark Phillips No preview available - 2000 |
Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820 Mark Phillips No preview available - 2000 |