The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in Early Modern England

by Backscheider,Paula R.

• ISBN13: 9780714642758
• ISBN10: 0714642754
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1996-05-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The public and private spheres are conceived to be separate and complementary, useful in understanding human experience and social phenomena, gendered and perhaps "natural". Taking the usefulness of this model as a focus, these essays ask how the spheres interpenetrate. The collection looks at the varied ways this persistent model of human thought has been formulated, and applies, tests, refines and contests the paradigm. Some of the essays endorse Habermas' view of the concept, some reject it, and some explain the public/private division completely differently. The essays reconsider the usefulness of the model and offer revisionary interpretations of many texts and of their contribution to modern thought and institution.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Introduction	p. 22
"Completing the Union": Critical Ennui, the Politics of Narrative, and the Reformation of Irish Cultural Identity	p. 41
"As Easy as a Chimney Pot to Blacken": Catharine Macaulay "the Celebrated Female Historian"	p. 78
Publicizing Private History: Mary Carleton's Case in Court and in Print	p. 105
Eroticizing the Subject, or Royals in Drag: Reading the Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett	p. 134
Swift's Sermons, "Public Conscience," and the Privatization of Religion	p. 150
The Construction of the Public Interest in the Debates over Fox's India Bills	p. 175
William Godwin and the Pathological Public Sphere: Theorizing Communicative Action in the 1790s	p. 199
Public Loathing, Private Thoughts: Historical Representation in Helen Maria Williams' Letters from France	p. 223
Vices, Benefits, and Civil Society: Mandeville, Habermas, and the Distinction between Public and Private	p. 244
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