Britain and Italy in the Long Eighteenth Century: Literary and Art Theories

The essays in this collection range across literature, aesthetics, music and art, and explore such themes as: the dynamics of change in eighteenth-century aesthetics; time, modernity and the picturesque; the function of graphic ornaments in eighteenth-century texts; imaginary voyages as a literary genre; the genesis of children's literature; the Italian opera and musical theory in Burney's novels; Italian and British art theories; and, patterns of cultural transfers and of book circulation between Britain and Italy in the eighteenth century. Collectively they epitomize the concerns and approaches of scholars working on the long eighteenth century at this challenging and exciting time. In the absence of universally agreed, over-arching interpretations of the cultural history of the long eighteenth century, these papers pave the way for the ultimate emergence of such explanations. Authors discussed here include Margaret Cavendish, David Russen, Francis Hutcheson, Reverend Gilpin, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Dugald Stewart, Dorothy Kilner, Frances Burney, Anna Gordon Brown, Saverio Bettinelli, Henry Ince Blundell, Ugo Foscolo, and Gian Domenico Guerrazzi.