1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996248126303316

Autore

Hawes Clement

Titolo

Mania and literary style : the rhetoric of enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart / / Clement Hawes [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1996

ISBN

1-139-08565-4

0-511-55348-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 243 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; ; 29

Disciplina

820.9/005

Soggetti

English literature - 18th century - History and criticism

Enthusiasm in literature

Literature and mental illness - Great Britain - History - 18th century

Literature and society - Great Britain - History - 18th century

English language - 18th century - Rhetoric

English language - 18th century - Style

Levellers

Ranters

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

pt. 1. Defiant voice -- pt. 2. Patrician diagnosis -- pt. 3. Challenging liminality.

Sommario/riassunto

This highly original study of the 'manic style' in enthusiastic writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries identifies a literary tradition and line of influence running from the radical visionary and prophetic writing of the Ranters and their fellow enthusiasts to the work of Jonathan Swift and Christopher Smart. Clement Hawes offers a counterweight to recent work which has addressed the subject of literature and madness from the viewpoint of contemporary psychological medicine, putting forward instead a stylistic and rhetorical analysis. He argues that the writings of dissident 'enthusiastic' groups are based in social antagonisms; and his account of the dominant culture's ridicule of enthusiastic writing (an attitude which persists in twentieth-century literary history and criticism)



provides a powerful and daring critique of pervasive assumptions about madness and sanity in literature.