"Behind this study lie two questions. Why is Bolingbroke, known primarily as a rationalist philosopher of the Enlightenment, so worshipped by English conservatives who are themselves, since Burke, so set against what the Enlightenment represents in political, social, and religious thought? The second question relates to Bolingbroke's public life. How does one explain the intense animosity between Bolingbroke and Walpole which provides the energy for English political life between 1725 and 1740? Is it mere vindictiveness, ambition, jealousy, or the inevitable reflex of the 'outsider' against the 'insider'? Or is it, as the late Victorian writers thought, their falling out at Eton which forever fated them to be protagonists?"—from the Preface.
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An exploration on Bolingbroke's influence on the politics and literature of the Augustan Age.
Examining the acrimonious political debte during the administration of Walpole from the perspective of its social context, [Kramnick] focuses directly upon the political culture of Augustan Britain. As the title implies, the volume is chiefly concerned with analyzing the thought and behavior of Bolingbroke and his supporters, especially Swift, Pope, Gay, and Lyttleton. But it devotes almost equal space to an explication of the ideas of both Bolingbroke's opponents... and ambivalent Commonwealthmen... who shared many of Bolingbroke's impulses but whose thought veered off in genuinely radical directions. The result is the most comprehensive and persuasive general study thus far published of early eighteenth-century British political thought.
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Kramnick's book has classic status not only for students of Augustan politics and literature, but for every discipline currently rethinking the eighteenth-century context under the aegis of the New Historicism.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780801480010
Publisert
1992
Utgiver
Vendor
Cornell University Press
Vekt
907 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Dybde
18 mm
Aldersnivå
01, UU, UP, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

Isaac Kramnick is Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University.