Title: The constitution of literature : literacy, democracy, and early English literary criticism /
Authors: Morrissey, Lee.
Publisher: Stanford University Press,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Criticism Political aspects Great Britain History; Criticism Political aspects Great Britain History; Books and reading Political aspects Great Britain History; Books and reading Political aspects Great Britain History; English literature Philosophy; English literature History and criticism Theory, etc.
Abstract: "The Constitution of Literature challenges the prevailing understanding of the relationship between literature and democracy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when both literature and democracy were acquiring their modern forms. Against the heroic story of criticism shaping the modern public sphere as recounted by Habermas and his followers, this study explores how different resistances to democratized reading preoccupied the thinking of the major English literary critics of the time. By paying attention to how critics participated in a debate over theories of reading - its processes for acquiring meaning from the page, its psychological and social effects on individuals, and its diffusion across the population - the book offers a new understanding of the political history of early literary criticism."--Jacket.
Contents: Preface : rethinking the history of criticism -- Introduction : Habermas and the resistance to reading in early English literary criticism -- 1. Radical literacy and radical democracy in the 1640s -- 2. "God forgive you Common-wealths-men" : Dryden and the project of restoration -- 3. "Avoid disputes" : The spectator, the market, and criticism -- 4. Early eighteenth-century rules for reading : an act of settlement -- 5. Hume, the politics of passion, and reading -- 6. Samuel Johnson, the Constitution, and the exuberance of signification -- Conclusion : the Enlightenment and the unfinished project of deconstruction.