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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... passages in Collingwood,s Idea of History, for example, as well as in White,s Metahistory, can be cited as evidence of this kind of prejudice—one that can only be corrected if we try to hold the writings of both periods at the same ...
... passage opens Hugh Blair's description of historical composition, a dis- cussion undertaken as part of a larger, formal discussion of belles lettres as a whole. In the more detailed description that follows, Blair will go on to modify ...
... passages can be conveniently consulted in Fritz Stern, Varieties of History (New York: Random House, 1972), 72–88, 117. 29 It is interesting to note how thoroughly this tension persists even in our own times where doubling formulas ...
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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 |