Idleness, contemplation and the aesthetic, 1750-1830 / Richard Adelman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adelman, Richard, 1982- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 89.

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 89

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

Aesthetics, British--18th century.

Aesthetics, British.

Aesthetics, British--19th century.

Solitude in literature.

Labor in literature.

Idealism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 203 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Idleness, Contemplation & the Aesthetic, 1750-1830

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Reconstructing the literary and philosophical reaction to Adam Smith's dictum that man is a labouring animal above and before all else, this study explores the many ways in which Romantic writers presented idle contemplation as the central activity in human life. By contrasting the British response to Smith's political economy with that of contemporary German Idealists, Richard Adelman also uses this consideration of the importance of idleness to Romantic aesthetics to chart the development of a distinctly British idealism in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Exploring the work of Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Friedrich Schiller, William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft and many of their contemporaries, this study pinpoints a debate over human activity and capability taking place between 1750 and 1830, and considers its social and political consequences for the cultural theory of the early nineteenth century.

Contents:

Introduction

1. The division of labour

2. Utilitarian education and aesthetic education

3. Cowper, Coleridge and Wollstonecraft

4. Coleridge's pantisocracy, biographia and Church and state

Conclusion

Epilogue: Wordsworth and Kingsley.

Notes:

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

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-139-08875-0

1-107-21373-8

1-283-12748-2

1-139-09253-7

9786613127488

1-139-09304-5

1-139-09202-2

1-139-09022-4

1-139-09113-1

0-511-67570-4

OCLC:

729167135