Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness

Ethical Inquiries in the Age of Enlightenment

By:

Brian Michael Norton

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650--1850

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Description

Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness explores the novel’s participation in eighteenth-century “inquiries after happiness,” an ancient ethical project that acquired new urgency with the rise of subjective models of wellbeing in early modern and Enlightenment Europe. Combining archival research on treatises on happiness with illuminating readings of Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Godwin and Mary Hays, Brian Michael Norton’s innovative study asks us to see the novel itself as a key instrument of Enlightenment ethics. His central argument is that the novel form provided a uniquely valuable tool for thinking about the nature and challenges of modern happiness: whereas treatises sought to theorize the conditions that made happiness possible in general, eighteenth-century fiction excelled at interrogating the problem on the level of the particular, in the details of a single individual’s psychology and unique circumstances. Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness demonstrates further that through their fine-tuned attention to subjectivity and social context these writers called into question some cherished and time-honored assumptions about the good life: happiness is in one’s power; virtue is the exclusive path to happiness; only vice can make us miserable. This elegant and richly interdisciplinary book offers a new understanding of the cultural work the eighteenth-century novel performed as well as an original interpretation of the Enlightenment’s ethical legacy.

Author Biography:

Brian Michael Norton is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at California State University, Fullerton.

Release date NZ

October 18th, 2012

Author

Brian Michael Norton

Audience

Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly

Pages

168

Series

Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650--1850

Dimensions

158x236x19

ISBN-13

9781611484304

Product ID

20373019

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