Scepticism and Literature An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson [Hardcover]

In this first study of the role of scepticism in literature, Fred Parker offers a lively and stimulating introduction to key issues in eighteenth-century literature and philosophy. Parker traces the presence of sceptical thinking in works by Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson, relates it more broadly to the social self-consciousness of eighteenth-century culture, and discusses its source in Locke and its inspiration in Montaigne.

Preface
List of abbreviations
1. Rational ignorance and sceptical thinking
2. Sceptical tendencies in Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding
3. 'Sworn to no Master': Pope's scepticism in the Epistle to Bolingbroke and An Essay on Man
4. Innocence and simulation in the scepticism of Hume
5. Tristram Shandy: singularity and the single life
6. Johnson's conclusiveness
Index

In lively and engaging readings,Scepticism and Literatureshows how sceptical discourse informs the writing of Hume and Sterne, as well as that of less likely figures, such as Pope and Johnson. --J. T. Parnell, Goldsmiths College, University of London

The great virtue of Fred Parker'sSkepticism and Literatureis to remind readers that many in the eighteenth century were more interested in curbing organized thought than in shouting it from the rooftopsThe prose is elegant, the wisdom affably pedestrian and secondhandSkepticism and Literatureis the graceful repackaging of earlier commonplaces. --Modern Philology

Specialists in eighteenth-century literature will be informed most by the stylistic delicacy with which Parker distinguishes each of these figures from one another.... Parker gives us the best rationale I have read for why Pope'sEssay on Manis a successful poem. --Michael McKeon,Studies inEnglish Literature 1500-1900

This important book explores some of the literary consequences of 18th-century Britain's interest in philosophical skelc,