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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 55
... History and Literature (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990); and Robert Canary and Henry Kozicki, eds., The Writing of History (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1978). 3 See the recent volume by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, x PREFACE.
... . (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987), 185. 7 Mink, “The Divergence of History and Sociology in Recent Philosophy of History,” in Histor- ical Understanding, 179. 1 Robert Henry, The History of Great Britain, From the xiv PREFACE.
... HENRY'S History of Great Britain from the Invasion by the Romans under Julius Caesar (1771–93) has never enjoyed the reputation of David Hume's more polished History and now is all but forgotten. Yet in many ways this large work, as ...
... Henry's plan for seven simultaneous narratives represented an ingenious experiment with narrative conventions designed to solve the problems brought on by an expanded definition of history's object of study. Where once it had been ...
... Henry pro- nounced his own plan “too bold and too extensive, I believe, for any one man.” Walpole praised Henry's work, especially its “plan”: “You have helped us, Sir, to read every period of our story with a map of the understandings ...
Other editions - View all
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 |