ABSTRACT
Making British Culture explores an under-appreciated factor in the emergence of a recognisably British culture. Specifically, it examines the experiences of English readers between around 1707 and 1830 as they grappled, in a variety of circumstances, with the great effusion of Scottish authorship – including the hard-edged intellectual achievements of David Hume, Adam Smith and William Robertson as well as the more accessible contributions of poets like Robert Burns and Walter Scott – that distinguished the age of the Enlightenment.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|20 pages
Problems
part II|85 pages
Contexts
chapter 2|25 pages
“The Self-Impanelled Jury of the English Court of Criticism”
Taste and the Making of the Canon
chapter 4|22 pages
“An Ample Fund of Amusement and Improvement”
Institutional Frameworks for Reading and Reception
part III|68 pages
Contingencies
chapter 6|25 pages
“One Longs to Say Something”
English Readers, Scottish Authors, and the Contested Text
part IV|43 pages
Constructions
part V|24 pages
Consequences