The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel by Geoffrey Sill

The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel by Geoffrey Sill

This 2001 study examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Geoffrey Sill locates the origins of the novel in the breakdown of medical and religious dogmas prior to the eighteenth century, leading to a crisis in the regulation of the passions which the novel helped to address. He examines medical, religious and literary efforts to anatomize the passions, paying particular attention to the works of Dr Alexander Monro of Edinburgh, Reverend John Lewis of Margate and Daniel Defoe, novelist and natural historian of the passions. He shows that the figure of the 'physician of the mind' features prominently not only in Defoe's novels, but also in those of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney and Edgeworth. The 'rise' of the novel comes to an end when the passions give way at the end of the century to the more modern concept of the emotions.

"Provocative and useful.." Eighteenth-Century Fiction
"The author especially excels in combining extraliterary texts and contexts with fiction, from which he draws new and often stunning conclusions." Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Geoffrey Sill is Associate Professor of English and Chair of his department at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is the author of Defoe and the Idea of Fiction (1983) and the editor of Walt Whitman of Mickle Street (1994) and other books. He is the Defoe editor of The Scriblerian and an active member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521027908
ISBN 10	052102790X
Title	The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel
Author	Geoffrey Sill
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2006-11-02
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.