Telling the Time in British Literature 1675-1830

<p>Although the broad topic of time and literature in the long eighteenth century has received focused attention from successive generations of literary critics this book adopts a radically new approach to the subject. Taking inspiration from recent revisionist accounts of the horological practices of the age as well as current trends in ecocriticism historical prosody sensory history social history and new materialism it offers a pioneering investigation of themes that have never previously received sustained critical scrutiny. Specifically it explores how the essayists poets playwrights and novelists of the period meditated deeply upon the physical form social functions and philosophical implications of particular time-telling objects. Consequently each chapter considers a different device – mechanical watches pendulums sandglasses sundials flowers and bells – and the literary responses of significant figures such as Alexander Pope Anne Steele William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge Charlotte Smith and William Hazlitt are carefully examined.</p>