LEADER 04546nam 2200733Ia 450 001 9910781051103321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-282-45870-1 010 $a9786612458705 010 $a1-4008-3212-8 024 7 $a10.1515/9781400832125 035 $a(CKB)2550000000007091 035 $a(EBL)483545 035 $a(OCoLC)609855973 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000362783 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11242813 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000362783 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10399217 035 $a(PQKB)10508573 035 $a(OCoLC)647874736 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse36625 035 $a(DE-B1597)446685 035 $a(OCoLC)979726400 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781400832125 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL483545 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10364750 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL245870 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC483545 035 $a(EXLCZ)992550000000007091 100 $a20090810d2010 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aMaking waste$b[electronic resource] $eleftovers and the eighteenth-century imagination /$fSophie Gee 205 $aCourse Book 210 $aPrinceton, NJ $cPrinceton University Press$d2010 215 $a1 online resource (206 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-691-13984-9 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $t Frontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tIntroduction. Making Waste -- $t1. The Invention of the Wasteland: Civic Narrative and Dryden's Annus Mirabilis -- $t2. Wastelands, Paradise Lost, and Popular Polemic at the Restoration -- $t3. Milton's Chaos in Pope's London: Material Philosophy and the Book Trade -- $t4. The Man on the Dump: Swift, Ireland, and the Problem of Waste -- $t5. Holding On to the Corpse: Fleshly Remains in A Journal of the Plague Year -- $tAfterword: Mr. Spectator's Tears and Sophia Western's Muff -- $tNotes -- $tBibliography -- $tIndex 330 $aWhy was eighteenth-century English culture so fascinated with the things its society discarded? Why did Restoration and Augustan writers such as Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Pope describe, catalog, and memorialize the waste matter that their social and political worlds wanted to get rid of--from the theological dregs in Paradise Lost to the excrements in "The Lady's Dressing Room" and the corpses of A Journal of the Plague Year? In Making Waste, the first book about refuse and its place in Enlightenment literature and culture, Sophie Gee examines the meaning of waste at the moment when the early modern world was turning modern. Gee explains how English writers used contemporary theological and philosophical texts about unwanted and leftover matter to explore secular, literary relationships between waste and value. She finds that, in the eighteenth century, waste was as culturally valuable as it was practically worthless--and that waste paradoxically revealed the things that the culture cherished most. The surprising central insight of Making Waste is that the creation of value always generates waste. Waste is therefore a sign--though a perverse one--that value and meaning have been made. Even when it appears to symbolize civic, economic, and political failure, waste is in fact restorative, a sign of cultural invigoration and imaginative abundance. Challenging the conventional association of Enlightenment culture with political and social improvement, and scientific and commercial progress, Making Waste has important insights for cultural and intellectual history as well as literary studies. 606 $aEnglish literature$y18th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aWaste (Economics) in literature 606 $aLiterature and society$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y18th century 606 $aRefuse and refuse disposal in literature 606 $aConsumption (Economics) in literature 607 $aGreat Britain$xCivilization$y18th century 615 0$aEnglish literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aWaste (Economics) in literature. 615 0$aLiterature and society$xHistory 615 0$aRefuse and refuse disposal in literature. 615 0$aConsumption (Economics) in literature. 676 $a820.9/3553 700 $aGee$b Sophie$f1974-$01465086 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910781051103321 996 $aMaking waste$93674943 997 $aUNINA