Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure

The surprising idea of pleasure as communal provides a new way of understanding Wordsworth's poetry and the Enlightenment's critical legacy.

Rowan Boyson (Author)

9781107023307, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 November 2012

254 pages
23.5 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'… challenging, capacious [and] conceptually rich … at once a critique and an astute extension of Wordsworth's philosophical and aesthetic commitments.' Michael Pickard, Studies in Romanticism

Ancient questions about the causes and nature of pleasure were revived in the eighteenth century with a new consideration of its ethical and political significance. Rowan Boyson reminds us that philosophers of the Enlightenment, unlike modern thinkers, often represented pleasure as shared rather than selfish, and she focuses particularly on this approach to the philosophy and theory of pleasure. Through close reading of Enlightenment and Romantic texts, in particular the poetry and prose of William Wordsworth, Boyson elaborates on this central theme. Covering a wide range of texts by philosophers, theorists and creative writers from over the centuries, she presents a strong defence of the Enlightenment ideal of pleasure, drawing out its rich political, as well as intellectual and aesthetic, implications.

Introduction
Part I. Pleasure Philosophy: 1. Shaftesbury, Kant and the sensus communis
2. Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and pleasure as power
Part II. Wordsworth's Common Pleasure: 3. Poetics of pleasure in the Lyrical Ballads
4. Economies of affect in The Prelude and Home at Grasmere
5. The politics of happiness in The Excursion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]