At zero point : discourse, culture, and satire in Restoration England / Rose A. Zimbardo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zimbardo, Rose A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Satire, English--History and criticism.

Satire, English.

English literature--17th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Language and culture--England--History--17th century.

Language and culture.

History.

Great Britain--History--Restoration, 1660-1688.

Great Britain.

Discourse analysis, Literary.

Semiotics and literature.

England.

Physical Description:

x, 203 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, [1998]

Summary:

At Zero Point presents an entirely new way of looking at Restoration culture, discourse, and satire. The book locates a rupture in English culture and epistemology not at the end of the eighteenth century (when it occurred in France) but at the end of the seventeenth century.

The book's hypothesis is based on Hans Blumenberg's concept of "zero point" -- the moment when an epistemology collapses under the weight of questions it has itself raised and simultaneously a new epistemology is under construction. Rose Zimbardo demonstrates that the Restoration marked the collapse of the Renaissance order and the birth of modernism (with its new conceptions of self, nation, gender, language, logic, subjectivity, and reality).

Using satire as the site for her investigation, Zimbardo examines works by Rochester, Oldham, Wycherley, and the early Swift for examples of restoration deconstructive satire that measure the collapse of Renaissance epistemology. Constructive satire, as exemplified in works by Dryden, expressed the modernist coding that reformulated the idea of self, invented interior space, and relocated truth in that inner human arena.

For nearly forty years Zimbardo has been one of the leading scholars in the field. At Zero Point will be heralded as a capstone to her distinguished career.

Contents:

1. "From Words to Experimental Philosophy": Language and Logic at Restoration Zero Point 22

2. The Semiotics of Restoration Deconstructive Satire 41

3. No "I" and No "Eye" 59

I. "Author," "Speaker," "Character" in Restoration Deconstructive Satire 59

II. Not Him: Oldham's "Aude aliquid. Ode" 69

III. Not Them: Wycherley's The Plain Dealer 80

IV. No-One, No-Place, No-Thing: Swift's Tale of a Tub 90

4. Genders, Sexualities, and Discourse at Restoration Zero Point 101

5. The Discursively Central "I" and the Telescope of Discourse 132

I. "The Proper Study of Mankind is M(E)" 132

II. Ordered and Ordering: The New Theory of Satire 141

III. Satiric Discourse and the Sacred Nation 149

IV. The "Other" End of the Telescope 155.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [172]-189) and index.

ISBN:

081312039X

OCLC:

37742338