The Pelican Guide to English Literature: From Dryden to Johnson: Volume 4

Book Overview

Edited by Boris Ford, this is the 4th volume in the Pelican Series of literary studies in English Literature.It covers the period from Dryden to Dr. Johnson. It begins with the survey of the social... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140203796
• Release Date: June 1957
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

An outstanding and rich collection

This book has an opening chapter on the social context of English Literature during this period and is followed by a survey of the Literature. Both of these are very ably written by A. R. Humphries. There then follow chapters on John Dryden(F.N.Lees) Samuel Butler (Ian Jack) Language 1660-1784 (A.S. Collins) John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester(V.De S.Pinto) Restoration Comedy( P.A. W. Collins) Literary theory and literary criticism( P.A.W. Collins) Literature and Science(C.J. Horne) Defoe as Novelist (Ian Watt) The Periodical Essayists(Jane H. Jack) An approach to Swift( D.W. Jefferson) Alexander Pope(Norman Callan) Poetry in the Eighteenth Century (T.S. Eliot) William Hogarth (V.De.S. Pinto) Samuel Richardson (Frank Bradbrook)Fielding and Smollet (A.R. Humphries) Tristam Shandy and its Tradition( D.W. Jefferson) This is a very rich anthology which provides first- rate analysis of an Age which is distinguished in part by its being the first in which a wide readership is at center, a concern for hard factual and experimental reality plays a good part, an Age in which Reason has great importance. Eliot accused the poets of this Age of a 'dissocation of sensibility' and Humphrey points out that is untrue to their complexity and that feeling and thought were often connected by them in startling new ways even as they may have spurned the fantastical of the previous Age.