The Age of Reasons

Quixotism, Sentimentalism, and Political Economy in Eighteenth Century Britain

By:

Wendy Motooka

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

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This book reads Don Quixote as a parodic example of eighteenth-century 'reason'. Reason was supposed to be universally compelling, yet it was also thought to be empirically derived. Quixotic figures satirize these assumptions by appearing to be utterly insane, while reproducing the conditions of universal rationality: they staunchly believe that reason is universal, that it can be confirmed by experience, and that they themselves are rational. Quixotism is rational madness. It challenges reason's presumed authority as the neutral arbiter of all controversy by turning the definition of reason itself into an object of political controversy. 'The Age of Reason' was actually an Age of Reasons, Motooka contends. Joining imaginative literature, moral philosophy, and the merging discourse of the new science, she seeks to historicise the meaning of eighteenth-century 'reason' and its supposed opposites, quixotism and sentimentalism. Reading novels by the Fieldings, Lennox and Sterne alongside the works of Adam Smith, Motooka argues that the legacy of sentimentalism is the social sciences. This book raises our understanding of eighteenth-century British culture and its relation to the 'rational' culture of economics that is growing ever more pervasive today.

Author Biography:

Wendy Motooka is Assistant Professor of English at Oberlin College, USA.

Release date Australia

July 9th, 1998

Author

Wendy Motooka

Audiences

Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Professional & Vocational
Undergraduate

Pages

300

Series

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

Dimensions

156x234x27

ISBN-13

9780415179416

Product ID

2818824

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