Britannia's issue
Subtitle: the rise of British literature from Dryden to Ossian
By: Howard D. Weinbrot.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 625
Subjects: Macpherson, James, 1736-1796; English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; Nationalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Nationalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; National characteristics, British, in literature; Nationalism in literature; Nativism in literature; Aesthetics, British; Great Britain -- In literature
Description: "Howard D. Weinbrot's Britannia's Issue chronicles the developing confidence in British letters and values from the 1660s to the 1760s. His range of evidence includes biblical, classical, economic, English, French, and Scottish sources that help to show eighteenth-century Britain's movement away from classical and towards native values and models in an expanding nation. He demonstrates that Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie reflects nationalist aesthetics, that Pope's Rape of the Lock affirms domestic harmony while rejecting Homeric violence, and that Windsor Forest sings unRoman peaceful expansion through trade. Thereafter, he makes plain how Dryden, Gray, and Collins naturalize the Greek ode, how philosemitism and its limits help to illuminate Handel's Israel in Egypt and Smart's Song to David, and how post-Culloden "Celtomania" influenced Macpherson's Ossian poems. These and other works belong to a united kingdom that respects the classics but regards them only as one part of Britain's literary and genetic synthesis. This learned and lucidly written book offers revisionist but historically grounded interpretations of important works within complex and varied eighteenth-century British cultures."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.