Why did eighteenth-century writers employ digression as a literary form of diversion, and how did their readers come to enjoy linguistic and textual devices that self-consciously disrupt the reading experience? Darryl P. Domingo answers these questions through an examination of the formative period in the commercialization of leisure in England, and the coincidental coming of age of literary self-consciousness in works published between approximately 1690 and 1760. During this period, commercial entertainers tested out new ways of gratifying a public increasingly eager for amusement, while professional writers explored the rhetorical possibilities of intrusion, obstruction, and interruption through their characteristic use of devices like digression. Such devices adopt similar forms and fulfil similar functions in literature as do diversions in culture: they 'unbend the mind' and reveal the complex reciprocity between commercialized leisure and commercial literature in the age of Swift, Pope, and Fielding.

A study of how literature of the early eighteenth century represented a newly fashionable life of amusement and diversion.

About the Author
Darryl P. Domingo is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Memphis. His research focuses on the often subtle ways in which eighteenth-century cultural phenomena - such as urbanization, entertainment and advertising - both represent and are represented by the devices of literary texts. Darryl has published essays in such journals as Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and The Review of English Studies.


Book Information
ISBN 9781107146273
Author Darryl P. Domingo
Format Hardback
Page Count 316
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 640g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 160mm * 18mm