Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and JohnsonUniversity of Wisconsin Press, 1989 - 262 pages During the second half of the 18th century the most powerful literary work in Britain was nonfictional - philosophy, history, biography, and political controversy, Leo Damrosch argues that this tendency is no accident; at the beginning of the modern age, writers were consciously aware of the role of cultural fictions, and they sought to ground those fictions in a real world beyond the text. Their political conservatism was a considered response to a world in which meaning was inseparable from consensus, and in which consensus was increasingly under attack. |
Contents
Texts and Their Realities | 3 |
Fictions of Self and World | 16 |
Life as Art | 66 |
Copyright | |
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Abu Moslem appear argument assumptions authority believe Boswell Boswell's Burke Burke's Caleb Williams century character Christian claims Cleanthes common consensus conservatism context culture Decline and Fall Demea doubt eighteenth eighteenth-century emotional empiricism empiricist Essays existence experience fact Falkland feeling fiction French Revolution Gibbon Gilbert White Godwin historian human Hume and Johnson Hume's Humean ideal ideas ideology imagination India individual invention Johnson and Hume Johnson says kind language literary live London Journal Marc Bloch means metaphor mind modern moral narrative nation nature never novel objects observes opinion passions past perceive Philo philosophical Political Justice present principles psychological Rambler Rasselas readers reality reason Reflections religion religious remarks rhetoric role Roman Samuel Johnson scene seems Selborne sense skepticism social social fictions society speech story Tacitus texts thing thought tion Tom Jones traditional Treatise truth Visigoth Whigs White whole words writing