The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-century British Literature and Culture

Első borító
Bucknell University Press, 2003 - 298 oldal
The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century. Jordan argues that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. However, this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure's importance to class status. Thus idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. One result of this anxiety was an increased surveillance of the supposed idleness of those members of society with less power to wield: the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of these groups is figured, in traditional literature and in extra-literary works. Idleness was also a concern for writers of the day, as writing became a money-earning profession. Jordan examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness, Samuel Johnson and William Cowper.

Részletek a könyvből

Tartalomjegyzék

Introduction
13
Six Days Shalt They Labor Idleness and the Laboring Classes
37
Whilst We Beside You But as Cyphers Stand Idleness and the Ladies
84
An Empire of Degenerated Peoples Race Imperialism and Idleness
123
Driving On the System of Life Samuel Johnson and Idleness
153
Under the Great Taskmasters Eye William Cowper and Idleness
178
Conclusion
217
Notes
222
Works Cited
276
Index
289
Copyright

Más kiadások - Összes megtekintése

Gyakori szavak és kifejezések

Népszerű szakaszok

170. oldal - Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me ; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry'.
23. oldal - Was nought around but images of rest : Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ; And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest, From poppies breathed, and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime, unnumbered glittering streamlets played, And hurled everywhere their waters sheen ; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.
158. oldal - In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood, whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed ; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture...
54. oldal - Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh ; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers ; but in singleness of heart, fearing God...
13. oldal - Were we to examine in the same manner all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the...
103. oldal - Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through — and very good lists they were — very well chosen, and very neatly arranged - sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen — I remember thinking it did her judgment...
172. oldal - Since the last Easter I have reformed no evil habit, my time has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass over me.
40. oldal - My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. T'hey learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.
24. oldal - Placed far amid the melancholy main, (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles ; Or that aerial beings sometimes deign To stand embodied, to our senses plain) Sees on the naked hill, or valley low, The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, A vast assembly moving to and fro: Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.

Bibliográfiai információk