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 62
... classical understandings of history to the needs of a mod- ern, commercial, and increasingly middle-class society. Eighteenth-century so- cial analysis no longer permitted a definition of history that restricted itself to the ...
... classical, it continued to entail that the best productions of modern letters would be held up to standards still deeply imbued with classical ideals, including the linearity and perspicuity that Henry strained so hard to achieve. My ...
... classical tradition, preoccupied with the evolution of scholarly methods, have studied eighteenth-century historians primarily in terms of their contribution to a metanarrative of disciplinary development.7 On the other, intellectual ...
... Classical Eloquence and a Postclassical Subject The questions I want to raise concern the ways in which history was reframed by eighteenth-century writers working in a variety of related genres. No simple answer is possible since this ...
... classical definitions of politics and history. As Hume pointed out in the Essays, even the Italians, who pioneered the mod- ern study of politics, had barely taken trade into account, though it had since become a preeminent concern for ...
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 |