Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 articles from June 2004

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 archives from June 2004

Swift on false witness.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... I In the first book of The "Art" of Rhetoric, Aristotle discusses the relative reliability of various kinds of witnesses in proving a judicial case, distinguishing first between ancient and recent witnesses, and then between "well-known...

Pope's Epistle to Bathurst and the meaning of finance.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... A large amount of recent scholarly and critical writing on the various relationships between economics and literature in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been based on the notion that financial innovations in the late...

Duck, Collier, and the ideology of verse forms.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... "Can we plausibly think of verse forms as having ideologies? Are patterns of rhetoric, thought, and value so fully built into structure that one can speak usefully in an absolute sense of what a particular form represents culturally or what...

David Simple and the fallacy of friendship.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... I Sarah Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple was first published in 1744; a year later, a second edition appeared, revised by her brother Henry, who introduced several hundred minor emendations to the text, as well as a single more...

Francis Hayman reading Paradise Lost in the 1740s.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... Francis Hayman had evidently been working on his Paradise Lost designs for at least four years prior to their publication in Thomas Newton's edition of 1749, for in a letter to the artist dated 10 October 1745, David Garrick remarks, "Have You...

Johnson and his "readers" in the epistolary Rambler essays.
June 22, 2004... Browsing through the range of critical works available on Samuel Johnson's Rambler periodical, one gets the impression that the Rambler has been to modern readers a sort of ugly baby whom critics feel they really ought to love, but, although...

Nostalgic correspondence and James Boswell's Scottish malady.
June 22, 2004... In February 1763 the young James Boswell, then in London, dined with his friends Andrew Erskine and Thomas Sheridan. The conversation turned to the poetry of Ossian, who recently had been "discovered" in the Scottish Highlands by another...

Literary taste as counter-enlightenment in Hume's History of England.
June 22, 2004... David Hume's six-volume History of England (1754-62) links culture to the engines of history in what we would now recognize as a characteristically "liberal" configuration. As Hume puts it, the "arts and commerce [are] the necessary attendants...

Recent studies in the Restoration and eighteenth century.
June 22, 2004... It may seem ungrateful, but I want to begin this review by asking if there were any such age as "The Restoration and Eighteenth Century." That awkward compound has given way to "The Long Eighteenth Century," but is this a period at all? A...

Swift on false witness.(Abstracts)(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... Swift's sermon of 1715, "On False Witness," is, compared to previous homilies on "sins of the tongue" (by Isaac Barrow, Robert South, Ezekiel, Hopkins, Peter Newcome), unique in focusing on government informers, in addressing its "Hearers" not...

Pope's Epistle to Bathurst and the meaning of finance.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... This article attempts to show that Alexander Pope's argument and poetic technique in the Epistle to Bathurst challenge the idea that words are like money or other economic tokens. Reading against the recent characterization of Pope's work as...

Nostalgic correspondence and James Boswell's Scottish malady.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... The essay examines James Boswell's correspondence with his friend, John Johnston of Grange, most of which dates from the 1760s; the essay emphasizes the correspondence that transmitted Boswell's London Journal. The essay argues that these...

Literary taste as counter-enlightenment in Hume's History of England.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... In David Hume's History of England, cultural achievement plays an ambiguous role in a larger narrative framework meant to demonstrate the nation's gradual progress toward refinement, liberty, and commercial success. Not only does culture,...

Johnson and his "readers" in the epistolary Rambler essays.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... This essay examines the fictitious "letters to the editor" in Samuel Johnson's Rambler in order to explore the author's powerful ambivalence toward his various personas, his readership, and his own text throughout the periodical.

Francis Hayman reading Paradise Lost in the 1740s.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... Francis Hayman's designs for Paradise Lost, which first appeared in Thomas Newton's 1749 edition, offer subtle editorial comment especially about the relationship of Adam and Eve. In the context of Hayman's other illustrations and his...

David Simple and the fallacy of friendship.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... This essay explores the relation between Sarah Fielding's novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and its sequel Volume the Last (1753). It argues that the later book should be seen as qualifying some of the ideas put forward in the earlier...

Duck, Collier, and the ideology of verse forms.(Abstracts)
June 22, 2004... Do verse forms have ideologies? Stephen Duck's unwitting affirmation of the current socioeconomic order in "The Thresher's Labour" seems to imply that the heroic couplet has a necessary connection to a hierarchical and authoritative universe,...

Recent studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.(Abstracts)(Bibliography)
June 22, 2004... An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for...