De Quincey's Disciplines

by McDonagh, Josephine

• ISBN13: 9780198112853
• ISBN10: 0198112858
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-08-11
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Drawing on a broad range of sources, De Quincey's Disciplines reveals the English Opium-Eater to be a more complex and contradictory figure than is usually portrayed. All too often pigeon-holed as a latter-day Romantic and psychedelic dreamer, Thomas De Quincey is shown here to have been aprolific contributor to the periodicals of his day, on subjects as diverse as astronomy, economics, psychology, and politics. Taking a theoretical, new historicist stance, Josephine McDonagh's innovative examination of De Quincey's less frequently scrutinized works recontextualizes De Quincey as a true interdisciplinarian, aspiring to participation in the major intellectual project of his time: the formation of new fieldsof knowledge, and the attempt to unify these into an organic whole.

Author Biography

Josephine McDonagh is a Lecturer in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Exeter.

Table of Contents

Bibliographical Note
Introduction	p. 1
De Quincey in History: Terror and Amnesia	p. 18
Debt and Desire: The Psychology of Political Economy	p. 42
Reader's Digestion: The Compensations of Literature	p. 66
Style Slaves: The Labour of Language	p. 91
The Violence of Aesthetics and the Comedy of Murder	p. 121
Opium-Eaters: The Addict, the Imperialist, and the Autobiographer	p. 152
Epilogue	p. 185
Select Bibliography	p. 188
Index	p. 207
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