Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-eighteenth-century Britain and FranceShaun Regan Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French history, writing, and ideas. Familiar to many as the British "year of victories" during the Seven Years' War, 1759 was also an important year in the histories of fiction, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Reading 1759 is the first book to examine together the range of works written and published during this crucial year. Offering broad coverage of the year's work in writing, these essays examine key works by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Edward Young, Sarah Fielding, and Christopher Smart, along with such group projects as the Encyclop die and the literary review journals of the mid-eighteenth century. Organized around a cluster of key topics, the volume reflects the concerns most important to writers themselves in 1759. This was a year of the new and the modern, as writers addressed current issues of empire and ethical conduct, forged new forms of creative expression, and grappled with the nature of originality itself. Texts written and published in 1759 confronted the history of Western colonialism, the problem of prostitution in a civilized society, and the limitations of linguistic expression. Philosophical issues were also important in 1759, not least the thorny question of causation; while, in France, state censorship challenged the Encyclop die, the central Enlightenment project. Taking into its purview such texts and intellectual developments, Reading 1759 puts the literary culture of this singular, and singularly important, year on the scholarly map. In the process, the volume also provides a self-reflective contribution to the growing body of "annualized" studies that focus on the literary output of specific years. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
Part I WRITING EMPIRE | 19 |
JOHNSON RASSELAS AND COLONIALISM | 21 |
WAR SLAVERY AND LEADERSHIP | 37 |
Part II SENTIMENTAL ETHICS LUXURIOUS SEXUALITIES | 55 |
SPECTATORSHIP DUTY AND SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT | 57 |
1759 AND THE LIVES OF PROSTITUTES | 75 |
Part III AUTHORSHIP AND AESTHETICS | 93 |
CRISIS AND CONTINUATION | 133 |
HUME CAUSATION AND RASSELAS | 149 |
Part V ORIGINALITY AND APPROPRIATION | 167 |
TRISTRAM SHANDY VOLUMES 1 AND 2 | 169 |
SARAH FIELDINGS THE HISTORY OF THE COUNTESS OF DELLWYN | 187 |
READING 1759 | 207 |
Chapter 11 WRITERS REVIEWERS AND THE CULTURE OF READING | 209 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 233 |
Chapter 5 YOUNG GOLDSMITH JOHNSON AND THE IDEA OF THE AUTHOR IN 1759 | 95 |
SUBLIME AESTHETICS IN SMARTS JUBILATE AGNO | 113 |
Part IV ENLIGHTENMENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS | 131 |
| 247 | |
| 253 | |
Other editions - View all
Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and France Shaun Regan Limited preview - 2012 |
Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and France Shaun Regan No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith aesthetic argued artistic authorship beauty Britain British Cambridge Companion Cambridge University Press Candide causation century characters Clarendon Press commercial concerning Conjectures on Original contemporary context Countess of Dellwyn Critical David Hume Diderot divine Dodsley eccentric edition eighteenth Eighteenth-Century Encyclopédie English Enlightenment Enquiry essay ethical Fanny Murray fiction Fielding's given parenthetically global Goldsmith Henry Fielding History Hume's Hurd idea Idler imagination Imlac impartial spectator James John Buncle Jubilate Agno Kitty Fisher language Letters literary culture Literature lives London Memoirs modern Monthly Review Moral Sentiments narrative novel Oliver Goldsmith Oxford University Press philosophical poem poet poetry political present propriety prostitute published Rasselas Rasselas's readers reading Robert Dodsley Samuel Johnson Samuel Richardson Sarah Fielding sense Shakespeare Shenstone Smart Smollett social Sterne Sterne's sublime suggests sympathy taste Theory of Moral tion Tobias Smollett Tristram Shandy vols Voltaire Voltaire's William William Shenstone words writing Young Young's Conjectures