The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830

by Edited by Thomas Keymer , Jon Mee

• ISBN13: 9780521809740
• ISBN10: 0521809746
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-08-02
• 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

List of contributors

Preface

Part I. Contexts and Modes: 1. Readers, writers, critics, and the professionalization of literature Barbara M. Benedict

2. Criticism, taste, aesthetics Simon Jarvis

3. Literature and politics Michael Scrivener

4. Literature, national identity, and empire Saree Makdisi

5. Sensibility Susan Manning

6. Theatrical culture Gillian Russell

7. Gothic James Watt

Part II. Writers, Circles, Traditions: 8. Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding Peter Sabor

9. Johnson, Boswell, and their circle Murray Pittock

10. Sterne and Romantic autobiography Thomas Keymer

11. Blake and the poetics of enthusiasm Jon Mee

12. 'Unsex'd Females': Barbauld, Robinson, and Smith Judith Pascoe

13. The Lake school: Wordsworth and Coleridge Paul Magnuson

14. Jane Austen and the invention of the serious modern novel Kathryn Sutherland

15. Keats, Shelley, Byron, and the Hunt circle Greg Kucich

16. John Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan.