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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... tion often appear to treat history more as an epistemological category than as a literary genre in its own right—a body of writing, in other words, with its own formal problems to solve and its own opportunities for experimenta- tion ...
... tion of the historical discipline itself. But here, perhaps, lies the underlying reason why the body of historiographical criticism is not weightier. Diffident as historians generally are about the theoretical pronouncements of philoso ...
... tion, government, or law; but none had even pretended to give “any thing like a history of learning, arts, commerce, and manners” (xxxiv). Are these sub- jects, he asked rhetorically, unworthy to be included in the history of a country ...
... tion are an inheritance of earlier social needs. In short, Henry and his audience shared a historical language and a set of narrative conventions that, to use the jargon of hermeneutics, were pregiven. Even the most thoroughgoing ...
... tion is given to the novel, to the Gothic revival in architecture, to history painting, to the influence of archeology or geology, or to many other topics of compelling interest. See Raphael Samuel's exasperated outburst in his recent ...
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 |