Women and enlightenment in eighteenth-century Britain
By: Karen O'Brien.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780521773492; 9780521774277
Subjects: English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Women in literature; Sex role in literature; Women -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Sex role -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Feminism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Enlightenment -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
Description: "During the long eighteenth century, ideas of society and of social progress were first fully investigated. These investigations took place in the contexts of economic, theological, historical and literary writings which paid unprecedented attention to the place of women. Combining intellectual history with literary criticism, Karen O'Brien examines the central importance to the British Enlightenment both of women writers and of women as a subject of enquiry. She examines the work of a range of writers, and explores the way in which Enlightenment ideas created a language and a framework for understanding the moral agency and changing social roles of women, without which the development of nineteenth-century feminism would not have been possible."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Anglican Whig feminism in England, 1690-1760: self-love, reason and social benevolence; title: From savage to Scotswoman: the history of femininity; title: Roman, gothic and medieval women: the historicisation of womanhood, 1750-c.1804; title: Catharine Macaulay's histories of England: liberty, civilisation and the female historian; title: Good manners and partial civilisation in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft; title: The history women and the population men, 1760-1830.