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Literature : The solicitation of the passions
Holbrook, Peter
Holbrook, Peter
Author
Abstract
This chapter explores some ways in which the passions have been depicted in European literature, across a vast stretch of time. The long quarrel between literature and philosophy has many dimensions, but the different valuation placed on the emotions by each is at the bottom of it. Literature’s value, Samuel Johnson supposed, was that it conveyed knowledge – dealt not with one-off, transitory phenomena but permanent and universal types. The relation between literature and reality or experience is Cervantes’s overarching concern in Don Quixote. The absurd and fantastical romances beloved of the old knight are contrasted with the actuality of his life, with the bareness of everyday existence in rural Spain generally. The extended joke of the book depends on the mismatch between Don Quixote’s romance-fantasy life and the empirical world in which these fantasies actually play out.
Keywords
Date
2020
Type
Book chapter
Journal
Book
The Routledge history of emotions in Europe : 1100-1700
Volume
Issue
Page Range
406-418
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
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Controlled