Vivasvan Soni is Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University.

Soni begins his erudite, wide-ranging account of happiness with the Greek philosopher Solon's dictum, 'Call no man happy until he is dead,' and derives from it a 'tragic' conception of happiness, one grounded in human mortality. He then traces the happiness 'trial narrative' through the long history of philosophy and literature from Aristotle to the eighteenth century, especially Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oliver Goldsmith, Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne, and William Wordsworth. Along the way he challenges conventional wisdom: where many have argued that happiness came into its own in the late eighteenth century,... Soni makes the case that serious thought about happiness had already runs its course by the 1770s.... This is a critical resource for scholars. Summing up: Essential.(Choice)

• Introduction: What Happened to Happiness?Part One1. Solon's Cryptic Injunction: "Call no man happy until dead"2. A Mourning Happiness: The Athenian Funeral Oration3. Difficult Happiness: The Case of Tragedy4. Aristotle's Hermeneutic of Happiness: The First ForgettingPart Two5. The Trial Narrative in Richardson's Pamela: Suspending the Hermeneutic of HappinessExcursus: Notes toward a Prehistory of the Trial Narrative6. Effects of the Trial Narrative on the Concept of Happiness7. Marriage Plot8. The Tragedies of Sentimentalism9. Kantian Ethics and the Discourses of Modernity10. Happiness in Revolution: Erasing the Political Concept of HappinessConclusion: The Afterlife of the Trial NarrativeBibliographyIndex

Vivasvan Soni is Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University.

Soni begins his erudite, wide-ranging account of happiness with the Greek philosopher Solon's dictum, 'Call no man happy until he is dead,' and derives from it a 'tragic' conception of happiness, one grounded in human mortality. He then traces the happiness 'trial narrative' through the long history of philosophy and literature from Aristotle to the eighteenth century, especially Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oliver Goldsmith, Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne, and William Wordsworth. Along the way he challenges conventional wisdom: where many have argued that happiness came into its own in the late eighteenth century,... Soni makes the case that serious thought about happiness had already runs its course by the 1770s.... This is a critical resource for scholars. Summing up: Essential.(Choice)

• Introduction: What Happened to Happiness?Part One1. Solon's Cryptic Injunction: "Call no man happy until dead"2. A Mourning Happiness: The Athenian Funeral Oration3. Difficult Happiness: The Case of Tragedy4. Aristotle's Hermeneutic of Happiness: The First ForgettingPart Two5. The Trial Narrative in Richardson's Pamela: Suspending the Hermeneutic of HappinessExcursus: Notes toward a Prehistory of the Trial Narrative6. Effects of the Trial Narrative on the Concept of Happiness7. Marriage Plot8. The Tragedies of Sentimentalism9. Kantian Ethics and the Discourses of Modernity10. Happiness in Revolution: Erasing the Political Concept of HappinessConclusion: The Afterlife of the Trial NarrativeBibliographyIndex

Vivasvan Soni is Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University.

Soni begins his erudite, wide-ranging account of happiness with the Greek philosopher Solon's dictum, 'Call no man happy until he is dead,' and derives from it a 'tragic' conception of happiness, one grounded in human mortality. He then traces the happiness 'trial narrative' through the long history of philosophy and literature from Aristotle to the eighteenth century, especially Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oliver Goldsmith, Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne, and William Wordsworth. Along the way he challenges conventional wisdom: where many have argued that happiness came into its own in the late eighteenth century,... Soni makes the case that serious thought about happiness had already runs its course by the 1770s.... This is a critical resource for scholars. Summing up: Essential.(Choice)

• Introduction: What Happened to Happiness?Part One1. Solon's Cryptic Injunction: "Call no man happy until dead"2. A Mourning Happiness: The Athenian Funeral Oration3. Difficult Happiness: The Case of Tragedy4. Aristotle's Hermeneutic of Happiness: The First ForgettingPart Two5. The Trial Narrative in Richardson's Pamela: Suspending the Hermeneutic of HappinessExcursus: Notes toward a Prehistory of the Trial Narrative6. Effects of the Trial Narrative on the Concept of Happiness7. Marriage Plot8. The Tragedies of Sentimentalism9. Kantian Ethics and the Discourses of Modernity10. Happiness in Revolution: Erasing the Political Concept of HappinessConclusion: The Afterlife of the Trial NarrativeBibliographyIndex