China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770
By:
- Synopsis
-
This book explores how a modern English literary identity was forged by its notions of other traditions and histories, in particular those of China. The theorizing and writing of English literary modernity took place in the midst of the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.
Eun Kyung Min argues that this quarrel was in part a debate about the value of Chinese culture and that a complex cultural awareness of China shaped the development of a 'national' literature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England by pushing to new limits questions of comparative cultural value and identity. Writers including Defoe, Addison, Goldsmith, and Percy wrote China into genres such as the novel, the periodical paper, the pseudo-letter in the newspaper, and anthologized collections of 'antique' English poetry, inventing new formal strategies to engage in this wide-ranging debate about what defined modern English identity.
Delivers a new account of the rise of English literary modernity and how new literary forms were influenced by notions of other cultures and traditions.
Provides an exploration of the relationship between new print media in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the self-conscious understanding of modern English identity.
Offers new insights into the debate between the Ancient and the Moderns, and into other early eighteenth-century arguments conducted in novels and magazines.
- Copyright:
- 2018
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781108386425
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 04/19/18
- Copyrighted By:
- Eun Kyung Min
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.