Slavery Ordained of God


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The London Jilt


Book Description

This entertaining novel’s full title, which claims that it will show “All the Artifices and Strategems which the Ladies of Pleasure make use of for the Intreaguing and Decoying of Men,” suggests that it is a cautionary tale. And in fact, The London Jilt is presented as the memoir of a courtesan by an anonymous editor who justifies its publication as a warning to young men. Yet the narrative is remarkable for its time in allowing the “jilt” to speak for herself, and she tells the much more sympathetic story of a woman who turns to prostitution only after her father is cheated out of his estate and she is thrust into the world without resources. Her struggles are as much economic as they are sexual, and include encounters with a wide variety of amorous but unsatisfactory men. This Broadview edition provides a critical introduction, commentary, explanatory notes, and appendices that incorporate selections from related contemporary works, including Spanish picaresque novels in which the narrator is a woman.




The Invention of English Criticism


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An account of the origins and development of literary criticism in the turbulent seventeenth- and eighteenth-century print marketplace.




The Culture of Epistolarity


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This book is an extensive investigation of letters and letter writing across two centuries, focusing on the sociocultural function and meaning of epistolary writing - letters that were circulated, were intended to circulate, or were perceived to circulate within the culture of epistolarity in early modern England. The study examines how the letter functioned in a variety of social contexts, yet also assesses what the letter meant as idea to early modern letter writers, investigating letters in both manuscript and print contexts. It begins with an overview of the culture of epistolarity, examines the material components of letter exchange, investigates how emotion was persuasively textualized in the letter, considers the transmission of news and intelligence, and examines the publication of letters as propaganda and as collections of moral-didactic, personal, and state letters. Gary Schneider is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas-Pan American.




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