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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Reviews
"Cervantes errant knight emerges as a metaphor for aberrant imagination in Scott Paul Gordon s discussion of the clash between Romantic and Enlightenment thought. Ranging across materials by early women writers - satire, poetry, and prose fiction - Gordon finds that the Quixotic becomes synonymous with misreading. This book then parries with established critical readings to offer provocative reinterpretations of its own." - Janine Barchas, University of Texas at Austin
"The Practice of Quixotism is a profoundly learned, astonishingly clever, and repeatedly eye- opening book.Differentiating between orthodox quixote narratives (which ask us to believe in the possibility of waking up to the real) and those texts that foster greater skepticism toward how reality is constructed, Gordon illustrates the unexpected ways that the quixote trope was employed during the long eighteenth century in Great Britain. Through careful readings of works by Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Fielding, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sophia Lee, and Ann Radcliffe, among others, Gordon offers fascinating epistemological and narrative connections.The book makes an important contribution to several fields of inquiry, simultaneously illuminating the literature of quixotes past and present theoretical controversies.Gordon convincingly demonstrates that all of us are quixotic, whether we acknowledge it or not, and shows that at least some eighteenth-century authors were wise to the problem.No previous scholar has given us such depth of perspective on the subject." - Devoney Looser, University of Missouri-Columbia"The Practice of Quixotism reflects Gordon's skill as a widely rea hermeneut, and it is a remarkable work of intellectual history and literary criticsm. By viewing the transition from Enlightenment to Romantic thought through the lenses of the quixote trope and postmodern theory, Gordon forces a reconsideration of the feminist critical consensus on works by Lennox, Lee, Sarah Fielding, and others. Through complex and subtle readings of women's writing, Gordon offers a new way to understand British culture in the long eighteenth century." - Stephen A. Raynie, Gordon College
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Practice of Quixotism
Book Subtitle: Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century Women's Writing
Authors: Scott Paul Gordon
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601536
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2006
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-7444-0Published: 18 December 2006
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-53506-4Published: 18 December 2006
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-60153-6Published: 13 November 2006
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 241
Topics: Literary Theory, Gender Studies, European Literature, British and Irish Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature