The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire

The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire
Author: Paddy Bullard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 744
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191043702

Eighteenth century Britain thought of itself as a polite, sentimental, enlightened place, but often its literature belied this self-image. This was an age of satire, and the century's novels, poems, plays, and prints resound with mockery and laughter, with cruelty and wit. The street-level invective of Grub Street pamphleteers is full of satire, and the same accents of raillery echo through the high scepticism of the period's philosophers and poets, many of whom were part-time pamphleteers themselves. The novel, a genre that emerged during the eighteenth century, was from the beginning shot through with satirical colours borrowed from popular romances and scandal sheets. This Handbook is a guide to the different kinds of satire written in English during the 'long' eighteenth century. It focuses on texts that appeared between the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Outlier chapters extend the story back to first decade of the seventeenth century, and forward to the second decade of the nineteenth. The scope of the volume is not confined by genre, however. So prevalent was the satirical mode in writing of the age that this book serves as a broad and characteristic survey of its literature. The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire reflects developments in historical criticism of eighteenth-century writing over the last two decades, and provides a forum in which the widening diversity of literary, intellectual, and socio-historical approaches to the period's texts can come together.

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
Author: Edward A. Bloom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136171886

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Shakespearean Criticism

Shakespearean Criticism
Author: Various
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 4406
Release: 2021-06-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317532295

Reissuing works originally published between 1984 and 1995, this set brings back into print early volumes from the Shakespearean Criticism Series originally edited by Joseph Price. The books present selections of renowned scholarship on each play, touching on performances as well as the dramatic literature. The pieces included are a mixture of influential historical criticism, more modern interpretations and enlightening reviews, most of which were published in wide-spread places before these compilations were first made. Companions to the plays, these books showcase critical opinion and scholarly debate.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
Author: Brian Vickers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2002-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 113478354X

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse

Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse
Author: J. K. Lloyd Jones
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443806269

There has long been a tendency to regard Thomas Hardy as a great tragic writer and to ignore or underestimate the value of his comic works. This derives no doubt partly from the fact that comedy as an art form has been consistently undervalued ever since Aristotle dealt with it so slightly and so slightingly. It also stems from the evident inability of some readers and critics to allow an artist a wide scope and multiple voices. Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse discusses the nature of comedy and the various theories that purport to explain or define it, and examines Hardy’s works — novels, short stories, and poetry — in terms of the categories of farce, humour, satire, and wit. It looks at where and why Hardy made use of these forms of comedy, what his historical sources were, and why this side of his work has been so frequently neglected. It also looks at what insights might be offered by Hardy — both directly and indirectly — to answer the difficult but always tantalizing question: what is comedy? The two subjects, Hardy and Comedy, are counterpointed throughout so that they prove to be mutually illuminating.

1 Henry IV

1 Henry IV
Author: Stephen Longstaffe
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2011-08-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441117679

An introduction to Shakespeare's I Henry IV - introducing its critical and performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play.

The Manufacturers of Literature

The Manufacturers of Literature
Author: George Justice
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780874137507

"The book combines an examination of the network of material conditions of authorship and publishing during the century with literary readings in order to explore the mutually constitutive nature of literature, the material forces that influence its production, and the social world of readers."--BOOK JACKET.

The Collective Imagination

The Collective Imagination
Author: Peter Murphy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317037847

The Collective Imagination explores the social foundations of the human imagination. In a lucid and wide-ranging discussion, Peter Murphy looks at the collective expression of the imagination in our economies, universities, cities, and political systems, providing a tour-de-force account of the power of the imagination to unite opposites and find similarities among things that we ordinarily think of as different. It is not only individuals who possess the power to imagine; societies do as well. A compelling journey through various peak moments of creation, this book examines the cities and nations, institutions and individuals who ply the paraphernalia of paradoxes and dialogues, wry dramaturgy and witty expression that set the act of creation in motion. Whilst exploring the manner in which, through the media of pattern, figure, and shape, and the miracles of metaphor, things come into being, Murphy recognises that creative periods never last: creative forms invariably tire; inventive centres inevitably fade. The Collective Imagination explores the contemporary dilemmas and historic pathos caused by this-as cities and societies, periods and generations slip behind in the race for economic and social discovery. Left bewildered and bothered, and struggling to catch up, they substitute empty bombast, faded glory, chronic dullness or stolid glumness for initiative, irony, and inventiveness. A comprehensive audit of the creativity claims of the post-modern age - that finds them badly wanting and looks to the future - The Collective Imagination will appeal to sociologists and philosophers concerned with cultural theory, cultural and media studies and aesthetics.