The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-century British Literature and CultureBucknell University Press, 2003 - 298 páginas The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century. Jordan argues that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. However, this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure's importance to class status. Thus idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. One result of this anxiety was an increased surveillance of the supposed idleness of those members of society with less power to wield: the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of these groups is figured, in traditional literature and in extra-literary works. Idleness was also a concern for writers of the day, as writing became a money-earning profession. Jordan examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness, Samuel Johnson and William Cowper. |
Contenido
| 13 | |
| 37 | |
Whilst We Beside You But as Cyphers Stand Idleness and the Ladies | 84 |
An Empire of Degenerated Peoples Race Imperialism and Idleness | 123 |
Driving On the System of Life Samuel Johnson and Idleness | 153 |
Under the Great Taskmasters Eye William Cowper and Idleness | 178 |
Conclusion | 217 |
Notes | 222 |
Works Cited | 276 |
Index | 289 |
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The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature ... Sarah Jordan Sin vista previa disponible - 2003 |
Términos y frases comunes
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Página 170 - Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me ; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry'.
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Información bibliográfica
| Título | The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-century British Literature and Culture Bucknell studies in eighteenth-century literature and culture, ISSN 1555-8827 |
| Autor | Sarah Jordan |
| Edición | ilustrada |
| Editor | Bucknell University Press, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0838755232, 9780838755235 |
| Largo | 298 páginas |
| Exportar cita | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |