Finding Room for Things

This review of Cynthia Sundberg Wall's "The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century" (Chicago, 2006) notes that Walls' book traces changes in the description of objects in a wide range of works, including maps, diaries, catalogues, poems and espe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Eighteenth century (Lubbock) 2010-04, Vol.51 (1/2), p.251-255
Main Author: Benedict, Barbara M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Commodities
Cultural history
Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731)
Eighteenth century literature
Empiricism
Epistemology
Mental objects
Modern literature
Narratives
Nonfiction
Novels
Pleasure
Poetry
Prose
Rhetoric
Source studies
Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Wall, Cynthia Sundberg
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Summary:This review of Cynthia Sundberg Wall's "The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century" (Chicago, 2006) notes that Walls' book traces changes in the description of objects in a wide range of works, including maps, diaries, catalogues, poems and especially novels. She argues that the description of things in their particularity demarcates changes in the representation of context and thus of significance itself. Yet questions about the historical representation of things challenge Wall's contention that description of things is a uniquely eighteenth-century phenomenon.
ISSN:0193-5380
1935-0201
1935-0201
DOI:10.1353/ecy.2010.0010