Friendship and Allegiance in Eighteenth-Century Literature - (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultu) by Emrys Jones

About the Book

"The concept of friendship has long been central to the field of eighteenth-century literary studies, not least because it was presented by the era's own authors as an essential aspect of their literary identities. For writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, being known as a good friend was just as important as gaining literary reputation.Friendship and Allegiance builds on recent scholarly interest both in friendship itself and more broadly in the relationship between privacy and publicity in the eighteenth century. It investigates how the idea of personal friendship could be distorted by its role in public discourse and whether friendship's value or meaning can ever be securely established in the midst of wider political, social and cultural debates. The book offers new ways of thinking about eighteenth-century friendship and about the prominent authors of the time who attempted to make sense of it"--

Book Synopsis

Friendship and Allegiance explores the concept of friendship as it was defined, contested and distorted by writers of the early eighteenth century. Setting well-known canonical texts (The Beggar's Opera, Gulliver's Travels) alongside lesser-known works, it portrays a literary world renegotiating the meaning of public and private virtue.

Review Quotes

To come

About the Author

Emrys D. Jones lectures on eighteenth-century and Romantic literature at the University of Greenwich, UK. He studied at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His publications include articles in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Medical Humanities.