Idleness and aesthetic consciousness, 1815-1900 / Richard Adelman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adelman, Richard, 1982- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 112.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 112

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Aestheticism (Literature).

Aesthetics in literature.

Laziness in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 233 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Charting the failure of the Romantic critique of political economy, Richard Adelman explores the changing significances and the developing concepts of idleness and aesthetic consciousness during the nineteenth century. Through careful analysis of some of the period's most influential thinkers, including John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, John Ruskin and Karl Marx, Adelman weaves together evolving ideas across a range of intellectual discourses - political economy, meditative poetry, the ideology of the 'gospel of work', cultural theory, the Gothic and psychoanalysis. In doing so, he reconstructs debates over passivity and repose and demonstrates their centrality to the cultural politics of the age. Arguing that hardened conceptions of aesthetic consciousness come into being at moments of civic unrest concerning political representation and that the fin-de-siècle witnesses the demonization of the once revolutionary category of aesthetic consciousness, the book demonstrates that late eighteenth-century positivity around human spirituality is comprehensively dismantled by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Contents:

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Idleness, moral consciousness & sociability

Political economy & the logic of idleness

The 'gospel of work'

Cultural theory & aesthetic failure

The gothicization of idleness

Conclusion

Epilogue substitutive satisfaction

Notes

Bibliography.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 25 Jul 2018).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-108-33583-7

1-108-53979-3

1-108-33740-6