Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain tells the story of long-term aspirations to comprehend, record, and disseminate complete knowledge of the world. It draws on a wide range of literary and non-literary works from the early modern era and British Enlightenment.

Autorentext

Seth Rudy is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Rhodes College, USA. Though devoted primarily to British poetry and prose of the eighteenth century, he has also published and presented work in the fields of Dickens studies, data visualization, and the modern history of print and digital encyclopedias.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Concepts of Completeness 2. Complete Bodies, Whole Arts, and the Limits of Epic 3. Worlds Apart: Epic and Encyclopedia in the Augustan Age 4. Mid-Century Experiments in Encyclopedism 5. Collapse and Reconstitution: Epic and Encyclopedia Revisited Coda: The Angel and the Algorithm Appendix Notes Bibliography Index