The power of the passive self in English literature, 1640-1770 /
"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...
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| Online Access: |
Full text (MCPHS users only) |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, UK ; New York :
Cambridge University Press,
2002
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| Subjects: | |
| Local Note: | ProQuest Ebook Central |
| Summary: | "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 This tradition - which Scott Paul Gordon locates in seventeenth-century religious discourse, in early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, in mid eighteenth-century acting theory, and in the emergent novel - resists autonomy and defers agency from the individual to an external "prompter." Gordon argues that the trope of passivity aims to guarantee a disinterested self in a culture that was increasingly convinced that every deliberate action involves calculating one's own interest. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas from their roots in the nonconformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa."--Jacket |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 279 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-272) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0511042124 9780511042126 9780521810050 0521810051 0511120079 9780511120077 9780511484254 0511484259 9780511044953 051104495X 0511157037 9780511157035 1280159553 9781280159558 |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Print version record. |
