Good. Plastic dustcover protection.

Hardcover.

This book is a study of the attitude of the leading English novelists of the eighteenth century to the contemporary class system and to current trends in philosophy and education. The ideas of divergent philosophers and w niters such as Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Pope, Johnson, Chesterfield and Rousseau are analysed in order to show how often they arc reflected in the plot, characterization and satirical themes of the novels of the century. The novelists' views on sexual ethics and characteristic eighteenth-century controversies about good breeding, honesty, greatness, happiness are examined in order to understand how they give shape to a new concept of the 'gentleman' quite distinct from the Renaissance concept of the gentleman as the perfect courtier.
A vivid picture of the social and political life of the century emerges as the new concept is described. Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that so many of the novelists concentrate on satirizing the degenerate and tyrannical behaviour of the upper classes, not one of them questions the validity of the stratified class structure. Nevertheless, eighteenth century writers are the first to realize that the exploitation and degradation of the ordinary man by social, political and legal institutions, and by the agents of money and power, are themes with which literature must concern itself.
EDWARD ARNOLD