Poetry of Attention in the Eighteenth Century

By identifying a pervasive cultivation of attention as a perceptual and cognitive state in eighteenth-century poetry, this book explores overt themes of attention and demonstrate techniques of readerly attention. ""Poetry of Attention in the Eighteenth Century" identifies a pervasive cultivation of attention in eighteenth-century poetry. The book argues that a plea from a 1692 ode by William Congreve-"Let me be all, but my attention, dead"--Embodies a wider aspiration in the period's poetry to explore overt themes of attention and demonstrate techniques of readerly attention. It historicizes eighteenth-century accounts of attention and pioneers a link between the period's poetry and recent discussions of attention in cognitive psychology. It contributes to the largely neglected history of a psychological trait that has assumed a recent cultural urgency, and it repositions eighteenth-century poems as a collective model for assiduous reading and supple, wide-ranging attention"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-13 History and Theory of Attention in the Eighteenth Century....Pages 15-60 The Filter of Attention in Mock-Heroic Poetry....Pages 61-83 Odes of Absorption....Pages 85-100 Multiple Sensory Modalities of Attention....Pages 101-125 Landscape Poetry I....Pages 127-159 Landscape Poetry II....Pages 161-179 Cowper’s Task of Attention....Pages 181-204 Conclusion....Pages 205-207 Back Matter....Pages 209-263