Wordsworth and the enlightenment idea of pleasure
By: Rowan Boyson
Series: Cambridge studies in romanticism -- 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
ISBN-13: 9781107023307
Subjects: Enlightenment; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Pleasure; Philosophy; Criticism and interpretation; Pleasure in literature
Description: "Ancient questions about the causes and nature of pleasure were revived in the eighteenth century with a new consideration of its ethical and political significance. Rowan Boyson reminds us that philosophers of the Enlightenment, unlike modern thinkers, often represented pleasure as shared rather than selfish, and she focuses particularly on this approach to the philosophy and theory of pleasure. Through close reading of Enlightenment and Romantic texts, in particular the poetry and prose of William Wordsworth, Boyson elaborates on this central theme. Covering a wide range of texts by philosophers, theorists and creative writers from over the centuries, she presents a strong defence of the Enlightenment ideal of pleasure, drawing out its rich political, as well as intellectual and aesthetic, implications"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Pleasure Philosophy: 1. Shaftesbury, Kant and the sensus communis; 2. Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and pleasure as power; Part II. Wordsworth's Common Pleasure: 3. Poetics of pleasure in the Lyrical Ballads; 4. Economies of affect in The Prelude and Home at Grasmere; 5. The politics of happiness in The Excursion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.