Criticism in Action: Enlightenment Experiments in Political Writing

Dena Goodman

Published by Cornell University Press 1989

Criticism in Action

Enlightenment Experiments in Political Writing

Dena Goodman

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501745850

Overview
Contents

About this book

Dena Goodman here offers a fresh explanation of how critical theory broke out of the mold of an earlier tradition of discourse—the mirror for princes genre—and shaped its own course in the eighteenth century. Criticism in Action provides a historical analysis of French Enlightenment texts as actions and as the focus of critical activity in which writers and their potential readers participate. Goodman approaches texts as forces that shape the thinking and acting of the individuals engaged in the act of reading and presents new interpretations of major Enlightenment texts by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot.

Author / Editor information

Dena Goodman is Lila Miller Collegiate Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, also from Cornell, and the editor or coeditor of several other books including, most recently, Furnishing the Eighteenth Century.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. MONTESQUIEU: The Epistolary Form of Criticism
1. The Comparative Critical Method Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. The System of Fidelities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. Justice as an Alternative Social Bond Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
PART II. ROUSSEAU: Posing Criticism Historically
4. Chance and Necessity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
5. Historical Narrative: The Form of the Text Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
PART III. DIDEROT: The Dialogical Critique of Society
6. The Implied Reader Reintroduced Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
7. The Dialogue between Two Cultures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
8. Critical Activity as Political Action Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Keywords: Political Science & Political History; Literary Studies; Philosophy

eBook

Published: May 15, 2019
ISBN: 9781501745850