LEADER 04714nam 2200709 a 450 001 9910781210803321 005 20230721010259.0 010 $a0-8014-6083-2 024 7 $a10.7591/9780801460838 035 $a(CKB)2550000000039672 035 $a(OCoLC)732957124 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10468037 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000534709 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11344878 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000534709 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10511648 035 $a(PQKB)11398034 035 $a(OCoLC)966802956 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse51934 035 $a(DE-B1597)478430 035 $a(OCoLC)979968134 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780801460838 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3138158 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10468037 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL769573 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3138158 035 $a(EXLCZ)992550000000039672 100 $a20071018d2008 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe burdens of perfection$b[electronic resource] $eon ethics and reading in nineteenth-century British literature /$fAndrew H. Miller 210 $aIthaca $cCornell University Press$d2008 215 $a1 online resource (277 p.) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-8014-4661-9 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tPreface -- $tResisting, Conspiring, Completing: An Introduction -- $tPart I. The Narrative of Improvement -- $t1. Skepticism and Perfectionism I: Mechanization and Desire -- $t2. Skepticism and Perfectionism II: Weakness of Will -- $tInterlude: Critical Free Indirect Discourse -- $t3. Reading Thoughts: Casuistry and Transfiguration -- $tPart II. The Moral Psychology of Improvement -- $t4. Perfectly Helpless -- $t5. Responsiveness, Knowingness, and John Henry Newman -- $t6. The Knowledge of Shame -- $t7. On Lives Unled -- $tAfterword -- $tNotes -- $tBibliography -- $tIndex 330 $a"In some moods, or for some people, the desire to improve can seem so natural as to be banal. The impulse drives forward so much in our culture that it can color our thoughts and shape our actions without being much noticed. But in other moods, or for other people, this strenuous desire becomes all too noticeable, and its demands crushing. It can then drive a sleepless attention to ourselves, a desolate evaluation of what we have been and what we are."-from The Burdens of PerfectionLiterary criticism has, in recent decades, rather fled from discussions of moral psychology, and for good reasons, too. Who would not want to flee the hectoring moralism with which it is so easily associated-portentous, pious, humorless? But in protecting us from such fates, our flight has had its costs, as we have lost the concepts needed to recognize and assess much of what distinguished nineteenth-century British literature. That literature was inescapably ethical in orientation, and to proceed as if it were not ignores a large part of what these texts have to offer, and to that degree makes less reasonable the desire to study them, rather than other documents from the period, or from other periods.Such are the intuitions that drive The Burdens of Perfection, a study of moral perfectionism in nineteenth-century British culture. Reading the period's essayists (Mill, Arnold, Carlyle), poets (Browning and Tennyson), and especially its novelists (Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and James), Andrew H. Miller provides an extensive response to Stanley Cavell's contribution to ethics and philosophy of mind. In the process, Miller offers a fresh way to perceive the Victorians and the lingering traces their quests for improvement have left on readers. 606 $aEnglish literature$y19th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aDidactic literature, English$xHistory and criticism 606 $aPerfection in literature 606 $aEthics in literature 606 $aLiterature and morals 606 $aBooks and reading$xMoral and ethical aspects$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y19th century 615 0$aEnglish literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aDidactic literature, English$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aPerfection in literature. 615 0$aEthics in literature. 615 0$aLiterature and morals. 615 0$aBooks and reading$xMoral and ethical aspects$xHistory 676 $a820.9/384 700 $aMiller$b Andrew H.$f1964-$01166288 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910781210803321 996 $aThe burdens of perfection$93757259 997 $aUNINA