The Eighteenth Century: The Context of English Literature

The Eighteenth Century: The Context of English Literature
ISBN-10
100003108X
ISBN-13
9781000031089
Series
The Eighteenth Century
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
209
Language
English
Published
2020-01-08
Publisher
Routledge
Author
Pat Rogers

Description

The aim of this book, originally published in 1978, is to make the reading of literary classics such as Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, The Beggar’s Opera and Tristram Shandy an even richer experience by giving them an intelligible place in history. The ‘context’ is seen not as a vague backcloth, but as a living fabric of ideas and events which animate Augustan literature. The authors cover the achievements of men like Hume, Walpole, Chippendale, Newton and Reynolds, who are often merely names to the literary student, and show how writers were affected by exciting developments in psychology, aesthetics, medicine and other fields. As a whole the book shows this period to have been an active, questing and complex era, whose literary masterpieces emanate from a rich and diverse culture.

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