Passion's Triumph over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester

by Christopher Tilmouth

Overview

Passion's Triumph over Reason presents a comprehensive survey of ideas of emotion, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a narrative which draws on tragedy, epic poetry, and moral philosophy, Christopher Tilmouth explores how Renaissance writers transformed their understanding of the passions, re-evaluating emotion so as to make it an important constituent of ethical life rather than the enemy within which allegory had traditionally cast it as being. This interdisciplinary study departs from current emphases in intellectual history, arguing that literature should be explored alongside the moral rather than political thought of its time. The book also develops a new approach to understanding the relationship between literature and philosophy. Consciously or not, moral thinkers tend to ground their philosophising in certain images of human nature. Their work is premissed on imagined models of the mind and presumed estimates of man's moral potential. In other words, the thinking of philosophical authors (as much as that of literary ones) is shaped by the pre-rational assumptions of the 'moral imagination'. Because that is so, poets and dramatists in their turn, in speaking to this material, typically do more than just versify the abstract ideas of ethics. They reflect, directly and critically, upon those same core assumptions which are integral to the writings of their philosophical counterparts.

Authors examined here include Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, and an array of lyric poets; but there are new readings, too, of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, Dryden's 'Lucretius', and Etherege's Man of Mode. Tilmouth's study concludes with a revisionist interpretation of the works of the Earl of Rochester, presenting this libertine poet as a challenging, intellectually serious figure. Written in a lucid, accessible style, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199212378
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2007
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Christopher Tilmouth is Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart One1. Positions in early modern moral thought2. Spenser, psychomachia, and the limits of governance3. Hamlet "lapsed in passion"4. Renaissance tragedy and the fracturing of familiar terms5. Augustinian and Aristotelian influences from Herbert to MiltonPart Two6. Hobbes: fear, power, and the passions7. The Restoration ethos of libertinism8. Rochester: the disappointments of Hobbism and libertinismCodaBibliography of works cited

Editorial Reviews

"One of the more engaging early modern studies in recent memory...An impressive display of erudition combined with incisive and often savvy readings of a number of literary and philosophical texts." —Clio

From the Publisher