Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment (Hardcover)

Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment reconsiders theories of apostrophe and poetic authority to argue that the Augustan age created a new form of inspiration, one that not only changed the relationship of literary production to authority in the modern period but that also crucially contributes to defining the movement of secularization in literature from the Renaissance to Romanticism. Usually considered the conservative counterparts to the Romantic project of secularizing religious enthusiasm, the Augustans are seen only in terms of negation: they remain a mere extension of seventeenth-century fury against enthusiastic discourse. This book disrupts and re-historicizes that literary lineage. By examining the formal mechanisms of invocation in Augustan literature, and by exploring a wider range of writers that extends beyond Swift and his vehement critique of enthusiasm, Eron charts a positive reform of enthusiasm as a species of the secular, which conforms to, instead of resisting, Enlightenment principles of the aesthetic; these call for a type of affect that promotes free reason and envisions the author's use of language as a process of discovery.Seeking to redefine what we mean by secularization in the early stages of the modern period, this book argues that secularization's link to enthusiasm, or inspiration, often associated with Romanticism, is an early eighteenth-century development. In using the term secular to characterize modern invocation, Eron considers Augustan inspiration not merely as a gesture towards the non-divine or non-metaphysical, but as a literary-rhetorical device that separates this world from the next insofar as it adopts the didactic, dialogic principles of an eighteenth-century public sphere. If Romantic enthusiasm has been described through the rhetoric of transport, or unworlding, then Augustan invocation appears more akin to a process of worlding in its central aims to appeal to the social other as a function of the eighteenth-century belief in a literary public sphere. This book makes a much-needed argument for the presence of a type of invocation in the Augustan age that aligns with early Enlightenment principles of the aesthetic and reveals definitions of genius and inspiration (hitherto unnoted in the eighteenth-century critical discourse) as formal agents of didacticism.

General

Imprint:	University of Delaware Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 2014
First published:	March 2014
Authors:	Sarah Eron
Dimensions:	236 x 160 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	266
ISBN-13:	978-1-61149-499-0
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Promotions
LSN:	1-61149-499-0
Barcode:	9781611494990

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!