The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism


Book Description

The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism was first published by Basil Blackwell of Oxford in 1987. A paperback edition appeared two years later, while in the following five years it was reprinted four times. However although the intervening years have seen the appearance of Italian, Portuguese, Slovenian and Chinese editions, no copies have been available in English since 1998. This Alcuin Academic edition has therefore been published in order to fill this gap, and more specifically to meet the needs of those academics and students who have contacted me over the past six or seven years in search of an English-language version of the book. Naturally I have considered writing a revised edition (which indeed some critics, as well as a few friends, have suggested is long overdue). -- Amazon.com.




The Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Illustrated


Book Description

Rousseau is known as the forerunner of the French Revolution. He called for a "return to nature" which included a society demonstrating true equality. Rousseau's main philosophical works, which outline his social and political ideals, include: The New Eloise; Emile, or On Education; and The Social Contract. Rousseau was the first political philosopher who, while exploring the origins of the state, attempted to explain the causes of social inequality and its forms. He believed that the state existed through a social contract with the people. Rousseau's writings rebuke modern society for inequalities, while providing ethical instruction and encouraging the science of compassion. DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN AND BASIS OF INEQUALITY AMONG MEN DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY ÉMILE, OR ON EDUCATION THE SOCIAL CONTRACT OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT CONSTITUTIONAL PROJECT FOR CORSICA CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GOVERNMENT OF POLAND REVERIES OF A SOLITARY WALKER THE CONFESSIONS OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
















Richardson and the Philosophes


Book Description

In mid-eighteenth-century Europe, a taste for sentiment accompanied the 'rise of the novel', and the success of Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) played a vital role in this. James Fowler's new study is the first to compare the response of the most famous philosophes to the Richardson phenomenon. Voltaire, who claims to despise the novel, writes four 'Richardsonian' fictions; Diderot's fascination with the English author is expressed in La Religieuse, Rousseau's in Julie - the century's bestseller. Yet the philosophes' response remains ambivalent. On the one hand they admire Richardson's ability to make the reader weep. On the other, they champion a range of Enlightenment beliefs which he, an enthusiast of Milton, vehemently opposed. In death as in life, the English author exacerbates the philosophes' rivalry. The eulogy which Diderot writes in 1761 implicitly asks: who can write a new Clarissa? But also: whose social, philosophical or political ideas will triumph as a result?




A Spectacular Failure


Book Description

This study examines Defoe’s three-volume Robinson Crusoe series in the light of the ‘banter’ style he developed as a pamphleteer. That heavily ironic style had brought him renown but also put him in the pillory. The present study explores for the first time Defoe’s complaint that readers and pirate abridgers misread his tale of the would-be trader Robinson Crusoe. Using Discourse Analysis and Relevance Theory to examine the early abridgements of Volume I and Defoe’s subsequent two volumes, this study argues that Defoe’s greatest success is also a peculiar failure.