The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel

ISBN-13: 9780521808057 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 272 str.

Geoffrey M. Sill

Opis

This new study examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Geoffrey Sill examines medical, religious, and literary efforts to anatomize the passions, paying particular attention to the works of Dr. Alexander Monro of Edinburgh, Reverend John Lewis of Margate, and Daniel Defoe, novelist and natural historian of the passions. He shows that the figure of the "physician of the mind" is prominent not only in Defoe's novels, but also in those of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney, and Edgeworth.

Recenzje

"The author especially excels in combining extraliterary texts and contexts with fiction, from which he draws new and often stunning conclusions." Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: the passions and the English novel; 1. The physician and the mind from Zeno to Arbuthnot; 2. The heart, the Holy Ghost, and the ghost of Michael Servetus; 3. Alexander Monro and the anatomist's gaze; 4. Defoe and the natural history of the passions; 5. Crusoe in the cave: family passions in Robinson Crusoe; 6. The sinner, the saddler and the brewer's wife: three case studies in desire; 7. 'Surprised by his passions': the ghost of Servetus and the reverend John Lewis; 8. 'Mr Jones had somewhat about him': Henry Fielding and the moral sense; 9. Burney, Richardson, and the 'extirpation' of the passions; Epilogue: Belinda and the end of the origins; Appendix 1. Who was 'Betty'?; Appendix 2. Who was 'Sir Benjamin Hodges'?; Appendix 3. The history of the 'history of the life of Servetus', told in letters; Bibliography; Index.