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
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... Tradition 220 LITERARY HISTORY, MEMOIR, AND THE IDEA OF COMMEMORATION IN EARLY- NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN 257 10. “The Comedy of Middle Life”: Francis Jeffrey and Literary History 259 11. “The Living Character of Bygone Ages”: Memoir ...
... traditional assumptions about historical knowledge, but also a good deal of formal experimentation that changed the shape of historical ac- counts and altered the character of historical reading. This book examines these adaptations in ...
... traditional historiography as written on humanist lines. On the other, Henry wanted as far as possible to save the appearances of linear narrative, which was the identifying marker of that earlier, still authoritative tradition. For ...
... tradition. I will return to Henry's History in a later chapter in the context of eighteenth- century debates over linearity in historical composition and other experiments with narrative form. I have introduced it now because no other ...
... tradition of political narrative. For no other literature of social description, in short, was the formal problem of narrative so significant to the continued iden- tity of the genre itself. It needs to be said that the fundamental ...
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 |