1st Edition

Radical Sensibility Literature and Ideas in the 1790s

By Chris Jones Copyright 1993
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    First published in 1993. Radical Sensibility provides a detailed account of the interrelations of literature, ideas and history in the eighteenth century’s Revolutionary decade.

    The book traces a continuity of ideas from Shaftesbury to Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and sets it beside a conservative tradition established in the work of Hume and Adam Smith. As a guide to the transformations of ‘sensibility’ as a concept, Jones examines the trajectories of three writers who work spans the decade: Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams, and the early Wordsworth.

    A mixture of literary textual analysis and historical and political documentation, Radical Sensibility will be important reading for students and teachers of poetry, ideas and the novel.

    Preface;  Abbreviated Titles; Introduction;  1. Varieties of Sensibility  2. Towards Revolution  3. Sensibility in Revolution: Godwin and Wollstonecraft  4. Sensibility in Reaction  5. Helen Maria Williams: Radical Chronicler  6. Charlotte Smith as Radical Novelist  7. Wordsworth and Sensibility;  Notes;  Bibliography;  Index

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