The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature, 1640-1770

AvScott Paul Gordon

Inbunden, Engelska, 2002

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Beskrivning

Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. This tradition - which Scott Paul Gordon locates in seventeenth-century religious discourse, in early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, in mid eighteenth-century acting theory, and in the emergent novel - resists autonomy and defers agency from the individual to an external 'prompter'. Gordon argues that the trope of passivity aims to guarantee a disinterested self in a culture that was increasingly convinced that every deliberate action involves calculating one's own interest. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2002-03-28
Mått:159 x 236 x 21 mm
Vikt:547 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:292
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9780521810050

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Scott Paul Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. He has published numerous articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century subjects.

Recensioner i media

"The Power of the Passive Self is an impressive and original book that makes an important contribution to current scholarship on the origins of the modern individual." Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: 'spring and motive of our actions', disinterest and self-interest; 1. 'Acted by another': agency and action in early modern England; 2. 'The belief of the people': Thomas Hobbes and the battle over the heroic; 3. 'For want of some heedfull Eye': Mr Spectator and the power of spectacle; 4. 'For its own sake': virtue and agency in early eighteenth-century England; 5. 'Not perform'd at all': managing Garrick's body in eighteenth-century England; 6. 'I wrote my heart': Richardson's Clarissa and the tactics of sentiment; Epilogue: 'A sign of so noble a passion': the politics of disinterested selves; Bibliography.