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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... interest in historiography lies primarily in the opportunity it gives to study the expression of political or philosophical ideas, as well as those who approach the subject in light of the history of scholarship.1 Historians of this ...
... interest generally lies in the doctrines and commitments that link history to other disciplines, and their first impulse has been to investigate a realm of ideas, rather than to disclose narrative structures. In short, historiographical ...
... interest in both social and interior experience that characterized the philosophical and literary interests of the British Enlightenment. Its central chapters explore the ways in which histori- ans, biographers, antiquarians ...
... , 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.
... interests of the historical. 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 ...
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 |