Mania and literary style [electronic resource] : the rhetoric of enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart / Clement Hawes.
Clement Hawes
BookThis 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.
Title |
Mania and literary style : the rhetoric of enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart / Clement Hawes. |
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Additional Titles |
Mania & Literary Style |
Edition |
First edition. |
Publisher |
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press |
Creation Date |
1996 |
Notes |
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015). Includes bibliographical references and index. English |
Content |
pt. 1. Defiant voice -- pt. 2. Patrician diagnosis -- pt. 3. Challenging liminality. |
Series |
Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought 29 |
Extent |
1 online resource (xii, 243 pages) : digital, PDF file(s). |
Language |
English |
National Library system number |
997007876759505171 |
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