The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature, 1640–1770 - Softcover

Gordon, Scott Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521021847 ISBN 13: 9780521021845

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Challenging recent work contending that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, this study recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas of passivity from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.

About this title

Book Description:

Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas of passivity from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.

About the Author:

Scott Paul Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. He has published numerous articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century subjects.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0521021847
• ISBN 13: 9780521021845
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292