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"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."--Publisher description.

Fiction --- Happiness in literature. --- Enlightenment --- Enlightenment. --- Fiction. --- Litteratur --- Lycka i litteraturen --- Glädje i litteraturen. --- Lycka --- Upplysningen. --- History and criticism --- Historia. --- Teori, filosofi --- 1700-1799. --- 1700-talet. --- Europe. --- Europa.