{"product_id":"melancholic-life-literary-expression-and-the-experience-of-history-from-burton-to-keats-9798765127308","title":"Melancholic Life: Literary Expression and the Experience of History from Burton to Keats","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA study of how 18th-century British literary writers deployed melancholic feeling to draw a complex web of relations between the embodied self and its historical present.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eMelancholic Life\u003c\/i\u003e argues that what binds 18th-century melancholics such as the speaker of James Thomson, Sarah Fielding's David Simple, or William Cowper is a belief that critical thought is worth voicing whether or not it contributes to social change. That belief converges with 18th-century ideas of sentiment and loneliness, but it also syncs up in surprising ways with theoretical models of political subjectivity that emerge in the 20th and 21st centuries. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJonathan C. Williams thus proposes a new way of thinking about the critical importance of literary melancholy in the 18th century: as the language of melancholic social criticism, a solitary protest against exploitative features of social life, including global commerce and print capitalism. That form of melancholic life helps to trace a genealogy from Robert Burton's Democritus to Defoe's Crusoe to the Romantic period; it also yokes the early capitalist historical moment of Mackenzie's \u003ci\u003eThe Man of Feeling \u003c\/i\u003eto the post-1968 modernity that characterizes the work of Theodor W. Adorno. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs \u003ci\u003eMelancholic Life\u003c\/i\u003e shows, melancholic social criticism persists even when there is little hope. That spirit of persistence becomes a condition of literary expression in the 18th century. Attention to melancholic expression reveals resonances not only to medical, religious, poetic, and philosophical language, but also between 18th-century thinkers and your own historical moment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jonathan C. Williams\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/11\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 320\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.04lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798765127308","brand":"Bloomsbury Academic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45198997684361,"sku":"9798765127308","price":120.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_902f98c4-74d8-4cf7-9fd1-b10cf72cb820.jpg?v=1769493443","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/melancholic-life-literary-expression-and-the-experience-of-history-from-burton-to-keats-9798765127308","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}