Isaac D'Israeli and Literary History

Isaac D'Israeli's contributions to the formation of literary history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries remain unexplored, his voluminous writings mined for apt quotations rather than considered as significant in their own right. This article argues that his questioning of genre hierarchies and period distinctions grew out of an attempt to correct what he saw as the limitations of contemporary historiographic and literary critical representations. Following his renunciation of revolutionary ideals,these inquiries were framed by a "conservative iconoclasm" that was fostered by the need to adjust loyalist sympathies to fit his own peripheral status. Committed both professionally and temperamentally to a pluralist understanding of history writing, D'Israeli integrated into his work from the 1790s through to the 1840s biographical, political, social, and psychological elements that led him ultimately to a distinctively literary historical mode of thought. Drawing on the resources of opinion, anecdote, and secret history, he articulates possibilities for historicist inquiry that continue to stand as powerful alternatives to the romantic ideology

Aesthetics · Anecdote · Art · Historicism · History of literature · Ideology · Literature · New Historicism · Politics · Renunciation · Romance · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy

• English, Autonomy, and the Republic of Letters

  K Gelder•Australian Humanities Review•2009

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• The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson

  Open Access•Jack Lynch•Age of Elizabeth in the Age of…•2002

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• Women's Reading in Britain, 1750–1835

  Open Access•Judy C Pearson, Jacqueline Pearson•Women's Reading in Britain,…•1999

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• The Eighteenth Century Invents the Canon

  Douglas Lane Patey•Modern Language Studies•1988

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• The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830

  Todd M Endelman, Todd Endelman•The Jews of Georgian England,…•1999

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• Desire and Excess

  Jonah Siegel•Desire and Excess•2000

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• The Crisis of Literature in the 1790s

  Open Access•Paul Keen•Crisis of Literature in The 1790s•1999

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• Figures of Conversion

  Michael Ragussis•Figures of conversion•1995

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• Society and Sentiment

  M Phillips, Mark Salber Phillips•Society and Sentiment•2000

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• Anecdote And History

  Open Access•Lionel Gossman•History and Theory•2003

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• Bibliomania

  Philip Connell•Representations•2000

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• Histories, Micro- and Literary

  Mark Phillips•New Literary History•2003

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