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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... period not with history, but the novel, a new genre that quickly became one of the preeminent literatures of social description. For this reason, it may be useful to say something about the relationship between my historiographical ...
... period is to imagine for a moment an eighteenth-century equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, with David Hume or Edward Gibbon nominated for the award in “nonfiction.”) Unfortunately, the modern restriction of literature to works of ...
... period. The story as I have told it is a British one, particularly a Scottish one. But there is no doubt in my mind that it is also a European episode and especially a French one. The justifications for drawing a boundary around a ...
... period and those who study the novel. Mary Catherine Moran, once a student, soon became a colleague in many areas of shared interest; later Mi- chael White, Matt Lauzon, and Dale Smith followed suit. Ed Hundert not only read the entire ...
... periods his history recounted: Each book begins and ends at some remarkable revolution, and contains the history and delineation of the first of these revolutions and of the intervening period. Every one of these ten books [i.e. the ...
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 |