Criticism in Action : : Enlightenment Experiments in Political Writing / / Dena Goodman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Goodman, Dena,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1989
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)

Dena Goodman here offers a fresh explanation of how critical theory broke out of the mold of an earlier tradition of discourse—the mirror for princes genre—and shaped its own course in the eighteenth century. Criticism in Action provides a historical analysis of French Enlightenment texts as actions and as the focus of critical activity in which writers and their potential readers participate. Goodman approaches texts as forces that shape the thinking and acting of the individuals engaged in the act of reading and presents new interpretations of major Enlightenment texts by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I. MONTESQUIEU: The Epistolary Form of Criticism -- 1. The Comparative Critical Method -- 2. The System of Fidelities -- 3. Justice as an Alternative Social Bond -- PART II. ROUSSEAU: Posing Criticism Historically -- 4. Chance and Necessity -- 5. Historical Narrative: The Form of the Text -- PART III. DIDEROT: The Dialogical Critique of Society -- 6. The Implied Reader Reintroduced -- 7. The Dialogue between Two Cultures -- 8. Critical Activity as Political Action -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index