The crisis of literature in the 1790s : print culture and the public sphere / Paul Keen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keen, Paul, 1963- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 36.

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 36

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Literature--Public opinion--History--18th century.

Literature.

Authorship--Public opinion--History--18th century.

Authorship.

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

Literature and society.

Books and reading--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Books and reading.

Romanticism--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Romanticism.

Printing--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Printing.

Great Britain--History--1789-1820.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 299 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book offers an original study of the debates which arose in the 1790s about the nature and social role of literature. Paul Keen shows how these debates were situated at the intersection of the French Revolution and a more gradual revolution in information and literacy reflecting the aspirations of the professional classes in eighteenth-century England. He shows these movements converging in hostility to a new class of readers, whom critics saw as dangerously subject to the effects of seditious writings or the vagaries of literary fashion. The first part of the book concentrates on the dominant arguments about the role of literature and the status of the author; the second shifts its focus to the debates about working-class activists, radical women authors, and the Orientalists, and examines the growth of a Romantic ideology within this context of political and cultural turmoil.

Contents:

Introduction problems now and then

Republic of letters

Men of letters

Preamble swinish multitudes

poorer sort

Masculine women

Oriental literature

Conclusion romantic revisions.

Notes:

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

Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-291) and index.

ISBN:

9781107117679

1107117674

9780511003844

0511003846

9781280153884

1280153881

9780511117824

0511117825

9780511149627

051114962X

9780511309779

0511309775

9780511484339

051148433X

9780511048401

0511048408

OCLC:

475870369