Godwin and the Book

Imagining Media, 1783-1836

AvJ. Louise McCray

Inbunden, Engelska, 2021

Del i serien Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism

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Häftad

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Beskrivning

Godwin and the Book explores a network of controversies concerning the relationship of media form to social futurity in Romantic-period Britain through the writing of the notorious philosopher-novelist William Godwin (1756–1836). It offers a fresh reading of Godwin’s fifty-year corpus, using evidence from his fiction, philosophy and essays to argue that, throughout his career, he figured books and reading in particular ways in order to defend a set of inherited beliefs about intellectual perfectibility. In the process, it highlights many wider debates that marked out the culture of this period – including disagreements over the physiology of the mind, the ethics of novel-reading, and the social consequences of death – and considers how these debates were intertwined with the formal development of British prose in the period.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2021-04-13
Mått:156 x 234 x 20 mm
Vikt:474 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism
Antal sidor:216
Förlag:Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:9781474475761

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Mer om författaren

J. Louise McCray received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh where she was a tutor in English Literature. Her publications include ‘Novel-Reading, Ethics, and William Godwin in the 1830s’, in Studies in Romanticism and ‘‘Peril in the means of its diffusion’: William Godwin on Truth and Social Media’, article forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Ideas (both in press).

Recensioner i media

Louise McCray's new study offers a fresh and compelling perspective on one of the central figures of British Romanticism. Godwin and the Book achieves a remarkably successful synthesis of the philosophical, political, literary, and religious concerns that animated Godwin's long and eclectic career. Students and scholars in wide range of disciplines will be stimulated and challenged by its arguments.

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction 1. The Matter of the Reader: Materialism and Private Judgement 2. The Ethics of Novel-Reading: Fiction and Moral Law 3. The Discipline of Reading: ‘Enquiry’ and Religious Dissent 4. Truth and Social Media: Books and Intellectual Regulation5. Books, Bodies and Monuments: Print and Perfectibility Bibliography Index