The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830

by Edited by Thomas Keymer , Jon Mee

• ISBN13: 9780521007573
• ISBN10: 0521007577
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
List of contributors	viii
Preface	xi
Part I Contexts and modes
Readers, writers, reviewers, and the professionalization of literature	3	(21)
Barbara M. Benedict
Criticism, taste, aesthetics	24	(19)
Simon Jarvis
Literature and politics	43	(18)
Michael Scrivener
Literature, national identity, and empire	61	(19)
Saree Makdisi
Sensibility	80	(20)
Susan Manning
Theatrical culture	100	(19)
Gillian Russell
Gothic	119	(20)
James Watt
Part II Writers, circles, traditions
Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding	139	(18)
Peter Sabor
Johnson, Boswell, and their circle	157	(16)
Murray Pittock
Sterne and Romantic autobiography	173	(21)
Thomas Keymer
Blake and the poetics of enthusiasm	194	(17)
Jon Mee
`Unsex'd females': Barbauld, Robinson, and Smith	211	(16)
Judith Pascoe
The Lake School: Wordsworth and Coleridge	227	(17)
Paul Magnuson
Jane Austen and the invention of the serious modern novel	244	(19)
Kathryn Sutherland
Keats, Shelley, Byron, and the Hunt Circle	263	(17)
Greg Kucich
John Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse	280	(16)
John Goodridge
Bridget Keegan
Index	296