Air's Appearance

Literary Atmosphere in British Fiction, 1660-1794

Jayne Elizabeth Lewis author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:27th Nov '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Air's Appearance cover

In "Air's Appearance", Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern literary sense of atmosphere and moving novelists to explore the threshold between material and immaterial worlds. "Air's Appearance" links the emergence of literary atmosphere to changing ideas about air and the earth's atmosphere in natural philosophy, as well as to the era's theories of the supernatural and fascination with social manners - or, as they are now known, "airs". Lewis thus offers a striking new interpretation of several standard features of the Enlightenment - the scientific revolution, the decline of magic, character-based sociability, and the rise of the novel - that considers them in terms of the romance of air that permeates and connects them. As it explores key episodes in the history of natural philosophy and in major literary works like "Paradise Lost", "The Rape of the Lock", "Robinson Crusoe", and "The Mysteries of Udolpho", this book promises to change the atmosphere of eighteenth-century studies and the history of the novel.

"Air's Appearance is witty as well as elegant. The subject is original, the research breathtakingly wide-ranging, and the language lyrically clear. Its suggestiveness alone opens up so many new interpretive possibilities, so many new ways of historical thinking, so many new perceptions of air in text and air around. It makes you think and see differently." (Cynthia Wall, University of Virginia)"

ISBN: 9780226476698

Dimensions: 23mm x 16mm x 3mm

Weight: 567g

304 pages