Miniature and the English Imagination - Literature, Cognition, and Small-Scale Culture, 1650-1765

Examining the phenomenon of miniaturization in material culture, literature and theories of cognition, this study examines the appeal and function of the small in the period from 1660 to 1765. Examining two kinds of miniatures - real and imaginary - it provides a rethinking of major and minor writers.

List of contents

1. Introduction to an age of small-scale; 2. Swift and miniature: Cogito ergo Gulliver; 3. Lilliput recalibrated: Johnson and others; 4. Toying with thought: Pope, Gay, Dodsley; 5. War in miniature: models, maps, medals, and Sterne's Tristram Shandy; 6. Science and miniature: animal rationis capax and homo depictor; Coda: 'the last extreme of littleness': miniature and the postmodern imagination; Bibliography.

About the author

Melinda Alliker Rabb is Professor of English at Brown University, Rhode Island. She is author of Satire and Secrecy in English Literature From 1650–1750 (2007), as well as articles and chapters on a wide range of eighteenth-century topics and writers.

Summary

Examining the phenomenon of miniaturization in material culture, literature and theories of cognition, this study examines the appeal and function of the small in the period from 1660 to 1765. Examining two kinds of miniatures - real and imaginary - it provides a rethinking of major and minor writers.

Product details

• Authors: Melinda Alliker Rabb, Melinda Alliker (Brown University Rabb, Rabb Melinda Alliker
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2021
• EAN: 9781108444286
• ISBN: 978-1-108-44428-6
• No. of pages: 253
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Material Culture, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800