The power of the passive self in English literature, 1640-1770 / Scott Paul Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, Scott Paul, 1965- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Passivity (Psychology) in literature.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

Christianity and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Christianity and literature.

Christianity and literature--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Ethics in literature.

Self in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 279 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. This tradition - which Scott Paul Gordon locates in seventeenth-century religious discourse, in early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, in mid eighteenth-century acting theory, and in the emergent novel - resists autonomy and defers agency from the individual to an external 'prompter'. Gordon argues that the trope of passivity aims to guarantee a disinterested self in a culture that was increasingly convinced that every deliberate action involves calculating one's own interest. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.

Contents:

Introduction. "Spring and motive of our actions": disinterest and self-interest

"Acted by another": agency and action in early modern England

"The belief of the people": Thomas Hobbes and the battle over the heroic

"For want of some heedfull eye": Mr. Spectator and the power of spectacle

"For its own sake": virtue and agency in early eighteenth-century England

"Not perform'd at all": managing Garrick's body in eighteenth-century England

"I wrote my heart": Richardson's Clarissa and the tactics of sentiment

Epilogue: "A sign of so noble a passion": the politics of disinterested selves.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-272) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-12505-7

0-511-04212-4

1-280-15955-3

0-511-12007-9

0-511-15703-7

0-511-32949-0

0-511-48425-9

0-511-04495-X

OCLC:

475916781