Probability and Literary Form: Philosophic Theory and Literary Practice in the Augustan Age

Douglas Patey

ISBN 10: 0521254566 / ISBN 13: 9780521254564

Published by Cambridge University Press, 1984

About this Item

From the Library of John Russell Taylor.

Seller Inventory # PL-10841-L29

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Probability and Literary Form: Philosophic Theory and Literary Practice in the Augustan Age
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521254566
• ISBN 13: 9780521254564
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This highly original and penetrating study explores fundamental intellectual predispositions and concepts which underpin the literature and thought of the Augustan period in England. By examining in particular Augustan notions of probability and the way they provided a framework for thinking about and organising experience, Dr Patey reconstructs a characteristically eighteenth-century theory of literature which offers a much more satisfactory account of the work of Pope, Johnson, Fielding and others than the Romantic literary categories already in existence. The scope of this study is encyclopaedic and it will be an essential reference work for all scholars of eighteenth-century English literature and intellectual history, as well as historians of ideas.

Book Description

This highly original and penetrating study explores fundamental intellectual predispositions and concepts which underpin the literature and thought of the Augustan period in England. The scope of this study is encyclopaedic and it will be an essential reference work for all scholars of eighteenth-century English literature and intellectual history, as well as historians of ideas.