British Literature 1640–1789: A Critical Reader

Designed to complement DeMaria′s textbook British Literature 1640–1789: An Anthology, this critical reader contains seventeen essays by sixteen contemporary literary critics and covers the full range of works printed in the anthology. All the essays were first published within the last ten years, and they represent current thinking about the literature in this chronological span. The Reader will help students and teachers of the period find new approaches to central canonical works, but it also provides introductions to several of the less well known writers included in DeMaria′s anthology.

Most of the essays in the reader articulate readings of important individual works while situating those works in historical contexts that provide background for understanding other writings of the period. Many of the essays also relate the contexts under study to larger historical or cultural movements. For example, David Norbrook′s essay provides a historically – based reading of Milton′s Areopagitica while making a contribution to the history of censorship and the evolution of the public sphere in England. Similarly, Catherine Gallagher′s essay on Aphra Behn′s Oroonoko explains how blackness of the novella′s main character functions in literary terms while providing background. Other essays throw light on such topics as the history of readers and authors; social definitions of sexuality; religious thought; nationhood; and the relations between public politics and the private, gendered self.

The critics selected for the reader are all currently very active, and many are young scholars whose work has begun to appear in only the last five or ten years: Sharon Achinstein, Helen Deutsch, George Haggerty, Adam Potkay, Carol Barash, D. N. DeLuna, and Frans De Bruyn join more senior established scholars such as Ruth Perry, Terry Castle, David Perkins, Howard Weinbrot, Claude Rawson, and Thomas Greene.

Acknowledgements.

A Note on the Form of Reference.

1. Areopagitica, Censorship, and the Early Modern Public Sphere: David Norbrook.

2. From ′Milton and the Fit Reader′, Sharon Achinstein.

3. ′The Balance of Power in Marvell′s "Horatian Ode"′: Thomas M. Greene.

4. ′Oroonoko′s Blackness′: Catherine Gallagher.

5. ′Lordly Accents: Rochester′s Satire′ (1994): Claude Rawson.

6. From Brittania′s Issue, ′Dryden′s "Anne Killigrew": Towards a New Pindaric Political Ode": Howard Weinbrot.

7. Ironic Monologue and ′Scandalous Ambro–dexter Conformity′" in Defoe′s The Shortest Way with the Dissenters": D. N. DeLuna.

8. ′Strange Complicities: Atheism and Conspiracy in A Tale of a Tub′: Roger Lund.

9. From Resemblance and Disgrace, ′The Rape of the Lock as Miniature Epic′: Helen Deutsch.

10. From English Women′s Poetry 1649–1714, ′Anne Finch: Gender, Politics, and Myths of the Self′: Carol Barash.

11. ′The Spirit of Ending in Johnson and Hume′: Adam Potkay.

12. From The Muses of Resistance, ′An English Sappho Brilliant, Young and Dead?′ Mary Leapor Laughs at the Fathers′: Donna Landry.

13. O Lachrymarum Fons: Thomas Gray′s Sensibility: George E. Haggerty.

14. ′The Culture of Travesty: Sexuality and Masquerade in Eighteenth–Century England′: Terry Castle.

15. From The Literary Genres of Edmund Burke, ′Theater and Counter–Theater in Burke′s Reflections on the Revolution in France′: Frans De Bruyn.

16. Cowper′s Hares: David Perkins.

17. Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth–Century England: Ruth Perry.

18. Unparodying and Forgery: The Augustan Chatterton: Claude Rawson.

Bibliography.

Index.

Robert DeMaria Jr is Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College. He is the author of British Literature 1640–1789: An Anthology in Blackwell′s Anthologies series and The Life of Samuel Johnson (1993) in Blackwell′s Critical Biography series, and of several other books, including Johnson′s Dictionary and the Language of Learning (1986).

"[This anthology] of critical essays makes a welcome addition to the scholarship and teaching of that historical span of English literary history often awkwardly referred to as ′the long eighteenth century." Notes and Queries