The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature, 1640-1770
Scott Paul Gordon (Author)
Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing.
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (292 pages)
9780511484254, 9780521810050, 9780521021845, 0511484259, 0521810051, 0521021847
1167543077
Introduction: 'spring and motive of our actions', disinterest and self-interest; 1. 'Acted by another': agency and action in early modern England; 2. 'The belief of the people': Thomas Hobbes and the battle over the heroic; 3. 'For want of some heedfull Eye': Mr Spectator and the power of spectacle; 4. 'For its own sake': virtue and agency in early eighteenth-century England; 5. 'Not perform'd at all': managing Garrick's body in eighteenth-century England; 6. 'I wrote my heart': Richardson's Clarissa and the tactics of sentiment; Epilogue: 'A sign of so noble a passion': the politics of disinterested selves; Bibliography.