Common sense in early 18th-century British literature and culture : ethics, aesthetics, and politics, 1680-1750 / by Christoph Henke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Henke, Christoph, author.

Series:

Anglia Book Series ANGB ; 46.

Anglia Book Series ANGB ; 46

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Literature and society.

Common sense.

Social aspects.

Great Britain.

History.

Common sense in literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Common sense--Social aspects--Great Britain.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

x, 313 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2014]

Summary:

In a time of political, epistemic and aesthetic revolutions, early 18th-century Britain saw the emergence of a public discourse of 'common sense' which had a lasting influence on clichéd concepts of cultural identity. By retracing the compensatory impulses of common sense discourse and highlighting the role of literary texts in its formation and dissemination, this study challenges the received view of Augustan England as a mere Age of Reason. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Discourse of Common Sense 1

1.1 The Argument: Common Sense as Compensation 3

1.2 A Short History of Common Sense in Philosophy and Criticism 9

1.3 The Discursive Formation of Early Eighteenth-Century Common Sense 30

2 The Ethics of Common Sense 44

2.1 Good Sense and Good Taste: The Common-Sense Union of Ethics and Aesthetics - Shaftesbury and Pope 45

2.2 Perversions of Moral Sense - The Fable of the Bees 63

2.3 Life Ethic and Happiness - Samuel Johnson and Rasselas 78

3 The Transgressions of Common Sense 95

3.1 "These Arrows that fly in the Dark": Approaching Augustan Satire and Common Sense 98

3.2 "Good Sense Defaced": Enthusiasm and False Learning - A Tale of a Tub and Peri Bathous 104

3.3 Human Nature, Reason, and Madness - A Satyr against Reason and Mankind, Gulliver's Travels, and An Essay on Man 128

4 The Politics of Common Sense 165

4.1 The Birth of Common Sense Discourse from the Spirit of Patriotism 167

4.2 English Common Sense Personified - Pasquin and the Many Lives of Common Sense 186

4.3 Nationalist Common Sense: Liberty and Revolution 212

5 The Other of Common Sense 227

5.1 The Foreign Other - Robinson Crusoe and The Citizen of the World 228

5.2 The Female Other - The Rape of the Lock 251

6 The Afterlife of Common Sense 276.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9783110343359

3110343355

OCLC:

885092668