British Literature 1640-1789 (Blackwell Anthologies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631195289 ISBN 13: 9780631195283

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1997

Synopsis

British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology covers the period between the British Civil War and the French Revolution. It includes the works of a great many authors and provides an invitingly wide variety of genres, forms, opinions, viewpoints, and styles. Canonical literary works are extensively represented and most texts are reprinted in their entirety including, for example, Aphra Behn's Oronooko and John Milton's Paradise Lost from first editions, or in the earliest recoverable versions. Other major works include: Daniel Defoe's The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad, Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal, Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas. Selections from contemporary documents (such as court reports) are used to illuminate important cultural and social issues at particular points of history.

A central aim has been to represent the period in a way that would have been more recognizable to people who lived at the time than the more conventional collection of great works of literature might do. By including the literature of private life and public life - letters, political ballads, broadsides, mock-epic poetry - DeMaria helps us to revise our sense of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature.

About this title

About the Author

Robert DeMaria Jr is Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College. He is the author of 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).

A central aim has been to represent the period in a way that would have been more recognizable to people who lived at the time than the more conventional collection of great works of literature might do. By including the literature of private life and public life - letters, political ballads, broadsides, mock-epic poetry - DeMaria helps us to revise our sense of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631195289
• ISBN 13: 9780631195283
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1248
• Editor: DeMaria Jr. Robert