British Literature 1640-1789: Keywords Contributor(s): DeMaria, Robert (Author) |
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ISBN: 0470654775 ISBN-13: 9780470654774 Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell OUR PRICE: $102.55 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Literary Collections | Essays |
Dewey: 820.9 |
LCCN: 2017059536 |
Series: Keywords in Literature and Culture (Kilc). |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.9" W x 9.1" (1.14 lbs) 264 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Chronological Period - 17th Century - Chronological Period - 18th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: An indispensable reference for scholars and students of eighteenth-century English literature This addition to the celebrated Wiley-Blackwell Keywords series explores the meanings of fifty-eight of the most important words in British literature of the period 1640-1789. Professor DeMaria focuses on words used with frequency and urgency throughout the works of most major and several minor writers of the British Neoclassical era, with the occasional reach back to the early seventeenth century for a definitive usage found in Francis Bacon, for instance, and look forward to the nineteenth century to the works of Wordsworth, Austen, and Keats. Through discussions of words such as atom, economy, humanity, labor, machine, slavery, society, and system he reveals underlying assumptions about the way writers of the period thought about the physical and social world. Likewise, considerations of words such as happiness, passion, truth, and virtue shed light on the ethical and moral commitments of the age. Unlike dictionaries and many big-data semantics projects, this book brings forth the ambiguities, nuances, and ironies that accrued to word usages during the period through a heightened awareness of the contexts in which they occurred.
Rigorous in its scholarship and historical reach, British Literature 1640-1789: Keywords is an indispensable resource which scholars and students of British Neoclassical literature will want to keep close at hand. It is certain to become a fixture of most university reference libraries. |