Literary and Cultural Intersections during the Long Eighteenth Century (Hardback)

Culture and literature, indeed intellectual life as a whole, in eighteenth-century Britain were characterized by complex internal tensions as well as influenced by the unprecedented atmosphere of major political, cultural and social change which led to the revolutions at end of the century. Furthermore, the diffusion of periodicals and newspapers, which formed the basis of public conversation in urban coffee-houses, functioned as a vehicle for the dispersion of works which publicly mirrored a private society in the process of transformation. The focus on this change and the circulation of new ideas on taste and polite society as well as on culture and literature can be found in the continual intertwining between the public and the private spheres of society. The aim of the first part of this collection of original, unpublished essays by young international scholars is to investigate the dynamics of these "overlapping" spheres through new readings of eighteenth-century literary works which not only analysed the mechanisms of the private and public spheres, but also highlighted some remarkable cultural features, such as clothing and fashion, gossip and gender issues. As suggested by the title, the second part of the collection will expand on the principal idea of "intersections" in eighteenth-century English literature: from the intersections linking the private and public spheres of British society, to those between eighteenth-century works within the British literary canon, taking into account the influence of European thought. The purpose of the second group of essays is thus that of offering fresh perspectives and a re-evaluation of literary and cultural reciprocal exchanges, in order to better locate or re-locate canonical works and authors within the eighteenth-century literary tradition.