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Making waste : leftovers and the eighteenth-century imagination / Sophie Gee.

By: Gee, Sophie, 1974-Material type: TextTextSeries: JSTOR eBooksPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2010Description: 1 online resource (viii, 196 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9781400832125; 1400832128Subject(s): Waste (Economics) in literature | Refuse and refuse disposal in literature | Consumption (Economics) in literatureAdditional physical formats: Print version:: Making waste.DDC classification: 820.9/3553 LOC classification: PR448.W37 | G44 2010Online resources: Click here to view this ebook.
Contents:
The invention of the wasteland : civic narrative and Dryden's Annus mirabilis -- Wastelands, Paradise lost, and popular polemic at the restoration -- Milton's chaos in Pope's London : material philosophy and the book trade -- The man on the dump : Swift, Ireland, and the problem of waste -- Holding onto the corpse : fleshly remains in A journal of the plague year.
Summary: Why was eighteenth-century English culture so fascinated with the things its society discarded? Why did Restoration and Augustan writers such as Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Pope describe, catalog, and memorialize the waste matter that their social and political worlds wanted to get rid of--from the theological dregs in Paradise Lost to the excrements in "The Lady's Dressing Room" and the corpses of A Journal of the Plague Year? In Making Waste, the first book about refuse and its place in Enlightenment literature and culture, Sophie Gee examines the meaning of waste at the moment when.
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Item type Current location Call number URL Status Date due Barcode
Electronic Book UT Tyler Online
Online 		PR448.W37 G44 2010 (Browse shelf) https://ezproxy.uttyler.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt7s3nt Available ocn647874736

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

The invention of the wasteland : civic narrative and Dryden's Annus mirabilis -- Wastelands, Paradise lost, and popular polemic at the restoration -- Milton's chaos in Pope's London : material philosophy and the book trade -- The man on the dump : Swift, Ireland, and the problem of waste -- Holding onto the corpse : fleshly remains in A journal of the plague year.

Why was eighteenth-century English culture so fascinated with the things its society discarded? Why did Restoration and Augustan writers such as Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Pope describe, catalog, and memorialize the waste matter that their social and political worlds wanted to get rid of--from the theological dregs in Paradise Lost to the excrements in "The Lady's Dressing Room" and the corpses of A Journal of the Plague Year? In Making Waste, the first book about refuse and its place in Enlightenment literature and culture, Sophie Gee examines the meaning of waste at the moment when.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This brief book on an unlikely topic is packed with insights. By focusing on "waste," Gee (English, Princeton Univ.) has found an original way to look at the literature of the Restoration and early 18th century. The author understands "waste" broadly: it includes the ruins of London after the Great Fire, dead bodies during the plague of 1665, undeveloped agricultural fields ("wasteland"), filth, excrement, even the abundance of God's creation that goes unused. By paying attention to the place of these "leftovers" in the culture of the era, the author is able to give novel readings of major works of literature, including John Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Alexander Pope's The Dunciad, Jonathan Swift's poems, and Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. Finding new things to say about canonical works is no small achievement, and Gee goes back and forth between minute close readings and sweeping historical arguments with ease. Best of all, she always writes clearly, making her book accessible even to beginners. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. T. Lynch Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sophie Gee is assistant professor of English at Princeton University and the author of The Scandal of the Season (Scribner), a novel based on the story behind Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock . She writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review , the Washington Post , and the Financial Times .

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