{"product_id":"9781611484304","title":"Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness: Ethical Inquiries in the Age of Enlightenment","description":"\u003cp\u003eFiction and the Philosophy of Happiness explores the novel’s participation in eighteenth-century “inquiries after happiness,” an ancient ethical project that acquired new urgency with the rise of subjective models of well-being in early modern and Enlightenment Europe.Combining archival research on treatises on happiness with illuminating readings of Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Godwin and Mary Hays, Brian Michael Norton’s innovative study asks us to see the novel itself as a key instrument of Enlightenment ethics. His central argument is that the novel form provided a uniquely valuable tool for thinking about the nature and challenges of modern happiness: whereas treatises sought to theorize the conditions that made happiness possible in general, eighteenth-century fiction excelled at interrogating the problem on the level of the particular, in the details of a single individual’s psychology and unique circumstances. Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness demonstrates further that through their fine-tuned attention to subjectivity and social context these writers called into question some cherished and time-honored assumptions about the good life: happiness is in one’s power; virtue is the exclusive path to happiness; only vice can make us miserable. This elegant and richly interdisciplinary book offers a new understanding of the cultural work the eighteenth-century novel performed as well as an original interpretation of the Enlightenment’s ethical legacy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bucknell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47057641930992,"sku":"9781611484304","price":78.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781611484304_p0.jpg?v=1769903740","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781611484304","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}