Political Magic

Christopher F. Loar

Christopher F. Loar

Political Magic

British Fictions of Savagery and Sovereignty, 1650-1750

Fordham University Press | 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823256945

Overview
Contents

About this book

Discusses fictional encounters between Europeans and purportedly “savage” people in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, arguing that these fictions illuminate debates about sovereignty, violence, and political community. Examines works by Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Eliza Haywood.

Author information

LoarChristopher F.:

Christopher F. Loar is Assistant Professor of English at Western Washington University.

Reviews

“Political Magic provides a crucial and important critical analysis of Cavendish, Behn, Defoe, Swift, and Haywood that should define discussions of Restoration and early eighteenth-century literature from now on.”

—Roxann Wheeler:
Any one interested in the tradition of the modern novel not indebted to realism or how to artfully combine theory, politics, and literature will find much to admire in Loar’s Political Magic. Exploring the way that magic, deceit, and sovereignty were habitually yoked in writers whose politics were as various as Cavendish, Behn, Defoe, Swift, and Haywood, Loar’s book examines the way that their fictions repeatedly stage a foundational political moment that inaugurates a modern although ambiguous civilizing project, one fraught with technologically-enhanced violence, deferred violence, and magical instruments rather than reason or rhetoric as techniques of government. Loar shows through a series of persuasive close readings of political theory and fiction that liberalism, at its inception, registers pessimism about the tendency of sovereignty to exceed the law and turn subjects into enemies.

—Jayne Lewis:

As pyrotechnic as it is closely reasoned, this bold and convincing new
book looks at the unlikely role that spectacular technologies of domination and enchantment played in the making of "modern" political community. Christopher Loar punctures the myth of modernity by reversing two standard narratives about the decline of magic and the rise of the
liberal subject. That subject's story, disturbingly beholden to technologies of violence and enchantment, is told through insightful new readings of Swift, Defoe, Behn, and Haywood. "Political Magic" reunites these writers and their fictions with the political philosophy and
savagely wondrous colonial practices of the seventeenth century.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	ix
Introduction: Magical Government Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
1. Enchanting the Savage: Th e Politics of Pyrotechnics in the Cavendish Circle Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	33
2. Fire and Sword: Aphra Behn and the Materials of Authority Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	66
3. Talking Guns and Savage Spaces: Daniel Defoe’s Civilizing Technologies Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	104
4. Doctrines Détestables: Jonathan Swift, Despotism, and Virtue Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	142
5. Savage Vision: Violence, Reason, and Surveillance in Eliza Haywood Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	181
Coda: Enemies Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	217
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	229
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	285
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	319

Political Magic

British Fictions of Savagery and Sovereignty, 1650-1750

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