Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century

One view of the author in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain held that poetic genius could reside in the lady or gentleman of fashion. Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century examines this cultural trope of genius-as-fashionista by applying an innovative mix of approaches--book history, Enlightenment and twentieth-century philosophy, visual studies, and material analyses of fashions in books and in dress--to specific editions of Alexander Pope, Mary Robinson and Lord Byron. In its material analyses of these books, Fashioning Authorship looks closely at bindings, letterforms, engravings, newspaper advertisements, correspondence, and other ephemera. In its theoretical approaches, it takes up the interventions of Locke and Kant in connection with the visual theories of Richardson, Hogarth, and Reynolds. These investigations point ultimately to a profound connection between Enlightenment formulations of subjectivity, genius, and fashion, a link that is relevant to the construction of celebrity in our own cultural moment.

O viziune a autorului in Marea Britanie din secolele al XVIII-lea si al XIX-lea a sustinut ca geniul poetic ar putea locui in doamna sau domnul modei. Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century examineaza acest trop cultural al geniului in calitate de fashionista prin aplicarea unui amestec inovator de abordari - istoria cartilor, iluminismul si filozofia secolului XX, studii vizuale si analize materiale ale modelor in carti si in imbracaminte- - la editiile specifice ale lui Alexander Pope, Mary Robinson si Lord Byron.