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Author Domingo, Darryl P., author.

Title The rhetoric of diversion in English literature and culture, 1690-1760 / Darryl P. Domingo.

Publication Info. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 305 pages)
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents "Unbending the mind": introduction by way of diversion -- "The predominant taste of the present age": diversion and the literary market -- "Pleas'd at being so agreeably deceiv'd": pantomime and the poetics of dumb wit -- "Fasten'd by the eyes": popular wonder, print culture, and the exhibition of monstrosity -- "Pleasantry for thy entertainment": novelistic discourse and the rhetoric of diversion -- "The soul of reading": Conclusion by way of animadversion.
Summary Why did eighteenth-century writers employ digression as a literary form of diversion, and how did their readers come to enjoy linguistic and textual devices that self-consciously disrupt the reading experience? Darryl P. Domingo answers these questions through an examination of the formative period in the commercialization of leisure in England, and the coincidental coming of age of literary self-consciousness in works published between approximately 1690 and 1760. During this period, commercial entertainers tested out new ways of gratifying a public increasingly eager for amusement, while professional writers explored the rhetorical possibilities of intrusion, obstruction, and interruption through their characteristic use of devices like digression. Such devices adopt similar forms and fulfil similar functions in literature as do diversions in culture: they 'unbend the mind' and reveal the complex reciprocity between commercialized leisure and commercial literature in the age of Swift, Pope, and Fielding.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
English literature.
Chronological Term 18th century
Subject Recreation in literature.
Recreation -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.
Recreation in literature.
Recreation.
Great Britain.
History.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Kommerzialisierung.
Unterhaltung.
Englisch.
Roman.
Digression.
Großbritannien.
Chronological Term 1700-1799
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Other Form: Print version: Domingo, Darryl P. Rhetoric of diversion in English literature and culture, 1690-1760. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016 1107146275 9781107146273 (DLC) 2015042968 (OCoLC)923547302
ISBN 9781316562819 (electronic book)
1316562816 (electronic book)
9781316536544 (electronic book)
1316536548 (electronic book)
9781316561256
1316561259
1107146275
9781107146273
9781316509456 (paperback)
Standard No. 40025968919