New Perspectives on The Spectator: Form, Style and Contexts (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature)

New Perspectives on The Spectator: Form, Style and Contexts offers a fresh approach to the much-referenced but rarely thoroughly read periodical The Spectator. Breaking free from the constraints of existing scholarly debates, which are dominated by issues of commercial and urban life and the emergence of the 'public sphere', this book brings to light previously unnoticed themes and features, building an alternative picture of the content, form, style, and significance of this influential work.It focuses on the essays authored by Joseph Addison, and develops a mode of immersed close reading to bring out hinterlands of thought concerned with forms of human experience, both interior and societal, that do not align with conventional evaluations of The Spectator as polite, rational and prescriptive.Each chapter draws on an extensive range of writing by Addison, including his prose and poetry beyond The Spectator, and examines a theme that appears distinctively and frequently across the hund