Philosophers and romance readers, 1680-1740
By: Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
Series: Palgrave studies in the enlightenment, romanticism and the cultures of print
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
ISBN-13: 9780230369375
Subjects: English Philosophy; History and criticism; Books and reading; Philosophy in literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; English Romances; LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory; History
Description: "In this lively and original book, eighteenth-century philosophy is called to account for what it owes to the early novel. Through the figure of the romance reader, the author tells a new story of eighteenth-century reading. The impressionable mind and mutable identity of the romance reader haunt the background of eighteenth-century definitions of the self, and the seductions of fiction insist on making their appearance in philosophy. Through discussions of Locke, Behn, Shaftesbury, Hume, and Richardson, this book traces the idea of romance as, in the process of engendering resistance, it comes nonetheless to define the empiricist mind as the reading mind. "--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Acknowledgements Introduction: From Passions to Language: The Transformation of the ImaginationLocke: Metaphorical Romances Behn: Romance from the Stage to the Letter Shaftesbury: Conversation and the Psychology of Romance Hume: Reading Romances, Writing the Self Richardson: How to Read Romance NotesBibliographyIndex.