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Cover image of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
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Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture

edited by Catherine Ingrassia and Jeff Ravel

Volume
Volume 33
Publication Date
Binding Type

Drawing on unusual archival materials, addressing a variety of nonliterary or extratextual sources, employing new theoretical approaches, and offering innovative discussions of established works, the essays gathered in the latest volume of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture reflect the most exciting new directions of research within the field.

The novel is a dominant focus, and the contributors to this volume offer new perspectives on the genre itself or bold new readings of such canonical texts as Les Liaisons dangereuses, Cecilia, Histoire de M. Cleveland, and the early fiction of Daniel...

Drawing on unusual archival materials, addressing a variety of nonliterary or extratextual sources, employing new theoretical approaches, and offering innovative discussions of established works, the essays gathered in the latest volume of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture reflect the most exciting new directions of research within the field.

The novel is a dominant focus, and the contributors to this volume offer new perspectives on the genre itself or bold new readings of such canonical texts as Les Liaisons dangereuses, Cecilia, Histoire de M. Cleveland, and the early fiction of Daniel Defoe, as well as Casanova's novelistic autobiography, Histoire de ma vie. Some essays use unusual or little-known sources or materials:—the early English novel, The Jamaica Lady; an anonymous British seaman's journal; and "infant's petitions," the letters that accompanied babies left at foundling hospitals. Other essays examine the complicated constructions of identity and authorship that emerge in various disciplines and genres: depictions of statuary in eighteenth-century French painting and literature; representations of the French literary marketplace; the role of singing in the poetry of Stephen Duck; the presence of ancient Stoic and Baconian principles in Samuel Johnson's moral writing; and the complicated correspondence between Horace Walpole and William Cole. The volume concludes with a special section of essays meditating on the complex eighteenth-century discourse on beauty and aesthetics.

Contributors: Jeffrey Barnouw, Barbara Benedict, Melissa Downes, Ted Emery, Timothy Erwin, Susan Greenfield, George Haggerty, Adam Komisaruk, Laurence Mall, James Mullholland, Alexander Pitosfsky, David Porter, Neil Saccamano, Laura Schattschneider, April Shelford, Peter Sonderen, Geoffrey Turnovsky, Caroline Weber

Reviews

Reviews

Ingrassia and Ravel have undertaken a difficult project and produced a volume of enduring value.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
284
ISBN
9780801878732
Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Catherine E. Ingrassia

Catherine Ingrassia is an associate professor of English and director of the Masters Program in English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Jeffrey S. Ravel
Featured Contributor

Jeffrey S. Ravel

Jeffrey S. Ravel is an associate professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680–1791 (Cornell, 1999) and a cofounder of CESAR, a Web site devoted to the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French theater.