ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 finds the Hays-Godwin debate between the relational and the independent self to be representative of tensions that run through a great deal of eighteenth-century literature, wherever the culture of public performance comes up against the period's equally strong model of a centre of self whose integrity is guaranteed by its detachment. How does this disengaged self (pillar of Enlightenment thought, according to accounts such as that of Charles Taylor) ever enter truly into engagement? A wide range of different texts and authors are discussed, including Godwin's Political Justice, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Daniel Defoe's novels, Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Samuel Johnson, Moliere's Le Misanthrope, Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, and Diderot's Rameau's Nephew. There is a particular focus on problems around the idea of sincerity and the ways in which a performance culture might permit, as well as block, intimate connection. The theatricality of love's performance is crucial here, and the chapter concludes with She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith's great comedy of courtship, and with the real life but hardly less theatrical performances of love which James Boswell recreates in his London Journal.
