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Irony and Earnestness in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Irony and Earnestness in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Irony and Earnestness in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Dimensions of Satire and Solemnity
Shane Herron , Flinders University of South Australia
January 2022
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9781108834438
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    The conventional literary history of the eighteenth century holds that upstart novelists and other intensely serious writers worked against the conservative and ironic sensibility of an earlier generation of satirists. However, many of these ostensibly earnest writers were exceptional satirists in their own right, employing the same ruses, tricks, and deceptions throughout their work. The novels of such canonical figures as Behn and Defoe, for example, passed themselves off as real documents, just as an earlier generation of hack writers combined the serious and the absurd. Re-examining this nexus between the ludicrous and the solemn, Shane Herron argues that intense earnestness was itself a central component of the ironic sensibility of the great age of literary satire and of Swift's work in particular. The sensationalism and confessionalism of earnestness were frequently employed tendentiously, while ironic and satirical literature often incorporated genuine moments of earnestness to advance writerly aims.

    • Discusses Swift and the genre of satire in relation to more earnest writers and writings, forging connections between seemingly disparate subfields in eighteenth-century studies
    • Uses moral sense theory to theorize affect and sentiment as inherently ironic constructs, connecting the literary history of satire and irony to the study of emotion
    • Provides an account of eighteenth-century literary history in which irony and earnestness function in tandem, making a significant contribution to an emerging body of scholarship revising progressive, teleological, and Whig-historical accounts of the period

    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘The book is well structured, well argued, and well written … Recommended.’ J. T. Lynch, Choice

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    Product details

    January 2022
    Hardback
    9781108834438
    250 pages
    235 × 159 × 20 mm
    0.51kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Swift and the hacks: A relationship reconsidered
    • 2. 'By One of the Fair Sex': Irony, sovereignty, and sexual difference
    • 3. Keeping up appearances: Satire between preservation and reformation
    • 4. Dark humor and moral sense theory: Or, how Swift learned to stop worrying and love evil
    • 5. Gratitude for the ordinary: Defoe's irony.
      Author
    • Shane Herron

      Shane Herron is a contributing editor at The Scriblerian. He holds Academic Status in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, and has taught English at a number of Universities in the US. His work has appeared in Theory & Event, Studies in English Literature, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction, among other venues.

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