The Rhetoric of Diversion in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1760

Darryl P. Domingo

doi:10.1017/CBO9781316536544

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Jones, Emrys D. 2018. Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture. p. 165.

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Dye, Jill Smith, James A Coffey, Bysshe Inigo and Harriman-Smith, James 2018. XIIThe Eighteenth Century. The Year's Work in English Studies, Vol. 97, Issue. 1, p. 574.

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Zuroski, Eugenia 2019. British laughter and humor in the long 18th century. Literature Compass, Vol. 16, Issue. 3-4,

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Darryl P. Domingo, University of Memphis

Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:: March 2016
Print publication year:: 2016
Online ISBN:: 9781316536544
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316536544

Subjects:: Literature, English Literature 1700-1830

30.99 (GBP)

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Why did eighteenth-century writers employ digression as a literary form of diversion, and how did their readers come to enjoy linguistic and textual devices that self-consciously disrupt the reading experience? Darryl P. Domingo answers these questions through an examination of the formative period in the commercialization of leisure in England, and the coincidental coming of age of literary self-consciousness in works published between approximately 1690 and 1760. During this period, commercial entertainers tested out new ways of gratifying a public increasingly eager for amusement, while professional writers explored the rhetorical possibilities of intrusion, obstruction, and interruption through their characteristic use of devices like digression. Such devices adopt similar forms and fulfil similar functions in literature as do diversions in culture: they 'unbend the mind' and reveal the complex reciprocity between commercialized leisure and commercial literature in the age of Swift, Pope, and Fielding.

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The Rhetoric of Diversion in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1760

This Book has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.

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Contents

The Rhetoric of Diversion in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1760
pp i-ii

The Rhetoric of Diversion in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1760 - Title page
pp iii-iii

Copyright page
pp iv-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

Figures
pp viii-ix

Acknowledgements
pp x-xiv

“Unbending the mind”: introduction by way of diversion
pp 1-25

Chapter 1 - “Thepredominanttaste of the present age”: diversion and the literary market
pp 26-80

Chapter 2 - “Pleas’d at being so agreeably deceiv’d”: pantomime and the poetics of dumb wit
pp 81-121

Chapter 3 - “Fasten’d by the eyes”: popular wonder, print culture, and the exhibition of monstrosity
pp 122-177

Chapter 4 - “Pleasantry for thy entertainment”: novelistic discourse and the rhetoric of diversion
pp 178-213

“The soul of reading”: conclusion by way of animadversion
pp 214-222

Notes
pp 223-275

Bibliography
pp 276-294

Index
pp 295-305

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The Rhetoric of Diversion in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1760

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