The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 (The New Cambridge History of English Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 2/16/2012
EAN 9781107604599, ISBN10: 1107604591

Paperback, 964 pages, 22.7 x 15.2 x 4.8 cm
Language: English

The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 offers readers discussions of the entire range of literary expression from the Restoration to the end of the eighteenth century. In essays by thirty distinguished scholars, recent historical perspectives and new critical approaches and methods are brought to bear on the classic authors and texts of the period. Forgotten or neglected authors and themes as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding marketplace for printed matter during the eighteenth century receive special attention and emphasis. The volume's guiding purpose is to examine the social and historical circumstances within which literary production and imaginative writing take place in the period and to evaluate the enduring verbal complexity and cultural insights they articulate so powerfully.

Introduction John Richetti
Part I. Literary Production and Dissemination
Changing Audiences and Emerging Media
1. Publishing and bookselling, 1660–1780 James Raven
2. The social world of authorship, 1660–1714 Dustin Griffin
3. Popular entertainment and instruction, literary and dramatic
chapbooks, advice books, almanacs, ballads, farces, pantomimes, prints and shows Lance Bertelsen
4. Novels on the market William B. Warner
Part II. Literary Genres
Adaptation and Reformation
5. Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama Harold Love
6. Dryden and the poetic career Steven Zwicker
7. Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (I)
from the Restoration to the death of Pope J. Paul Hunter
8. Eighteenth-century women poets Paula Backscheider
9. Systems satire
Swift.com Michael Seidel
10. Persistence, adaptations and transformations in pastoral and georgic poetry David Fairer
11. Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (II)
after Pope John Sitter
12. Drama and theatre in the mid- and later eighteenth century Robert D. Hume
13. Scottish poetry and regional literary expression Fiona Stafford
Part III. Literature and Intellectual Life
The Production and Transmission of Culture
14. History and literature, 1660–1780 Karen O'Brien
15. A preliminary discourse on philosophy and literature Michael Prince
16. British and European literature and thought Jeffrey Barnouw
17. Religion and literature Isabel Rivers
18. Literary criticism and the rise of national literary history Lawrence Lipking
19. Augustan England and British America William C. Dowling
Part IV. Literature and Social and Institutional Change
20. The eighteenth-century periodical essay Robert De Maria
21. Public opinion and the political pamphlet R. A. Downie
22. Sentimental fiction
ethics, social critique and philanthropy Thomas Keymer
23. Folklore, antiquarianism, scholarship and high literary culture Robert Folkenflik
Part V. Literary Genres
Transformation and New Forms of Expressiveness
24. Personal letters Patricia Spacks
25. Diary and autobiography Stuart Sherman
26. The Gothic novel Terry Castle
27. Eighteenth-century travel literature Carole Fabricant
28. Women novelists, 1740s–1780s Felicity Nussbaum
29. Burke and the uses of eloquence
political prose in the 1770s and 1780s Frans de Bruyn
Part VI. Conclusion
30. More is different
literary change in the mid- and late eighteenth century Clifford Siskin
Chronology
Biography.

'... the new Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780, is a welcome and needed reference ... a volume to ponder, to enjoy, and in places, to challenge. … the essays in this volume jostle against one another, some synthesizing recent information, some proposing new opinions, some challenging modern trends. Richetti and his colleagues are to be commended for producing a book that represents so much of the best recent thinking about eighteenth-century literature.' Claudia Kairoff, Eighteenth-Century Life

'This volume succeeds in representing the variety of texts between 1660 and 1780 that are studied as English literature, and simultaneously gives a lively sense of the debates, both in the period represented and in current criticism and scholarship, about the boundaries and the purpose of the category of literature ... The volume is reliable and stimulating. It will have a long life as a work of reference, and is an excellent indication of the current state of the subject.' Forum for Modern Language Studies

'... this volume provides a comprehensive survey of authors and literary genres by focusing on a narrative account of what a variety of individual scholars regard as the most significant features of their subjects.' American Reference Books Annual

'In briefly reflecting on a volume as compendious as this one it is needless to say how much of interest and value it contains that I haven't been able even to allude to. The centurial significance of the Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780, its status as the first of its kind since George Saintsbury and his Peace of the Augustans, only furthers the importance of Richetti's collection.' Michael McKeon, SEL-Studies in English Literature