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
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... Smith followed suit. Ed Hundert not only read the entire manuscript, but also sustained the spirits of the author in the long, slow process of revision. Many other friends, too, have shown me paths that I have tried to explore ...
... Smith and the History of Private Life: Social and Sentimental Narratives in Eighteenth- Century Historiography,” in The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Brit- ain, ed. D. Kelley and D. Sacks (Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Cambridge ...
... Smith,s Wealth of Nations (1776). Philosophical history came into its own with the appearance of Hume,s History of England, the first two volumes of which were published in 1754 and 1757, and with Voltaire,s Essai sur les moeurs (1756) ...
... Smith's views on historical narrative, the wide social understanding called for by the Monthly is not necessarily incompatible with Blair's literary conservatism. (See chapter 3.) Accepting the idea that both outlooks are, in fact ...
... Smith, Ferguson, Millar, and others made it clear that the possibilities of politi- cal action were shaped in a hundred ways by the often invisible movements of economy, custom, or opinion. Considered in relationship to the social frame ...
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 |