Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature

'Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease' (Benjamin Franklin). Such negative evaluations of idleness and their contrary, positive reevaluations, as in Cyril Connolly's 'Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present', have been common attitudes towards leisurely disporting and idle repose. This collection of essays traces the history of representations of idleness, indolence and leisure in English literature from the late Middle Ages to the present day. It focuses on issues as varied as the figure of the idle apprentice in the Elizabethan pamphlet wars, the 'lazy native' in British colonial discourse, positive re-evaluations of indolence and repose in the Romantic era and the delights of tramping in early twentieth-century prose. The contributions also significantly inflect current theoretical debates on race, class and gender. The topicality of the subject is emphasized by two pieces of sociological analysis which serve as epilogues to the volume.

Monika Fludernik is Professor of English at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She is the author of several monographs, among them Towards a 'Natural' Narratology (1996) and has (co-)edited numerous collections, most recently Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses (2010) and Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor (2011).

Miriam Nandi is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and alumna of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. She is the author of two monographs and has published on early modern autobiographical writing, critical mixed-race studies and postcolonial theory.

List of illustrations
Notes on the Contributors
Introduction; Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi
1. Otium, Negotium and the Fear of Acedia in the Writings of England's Late Medieval Ricardian Poets; Gregory M. Sadlek
2. The Dangers and Pleasures of Filling Vacuous Time: Idleness in Early Modern Diaries; Miriam Nandi
3. The 'Sweet Toyle' of Blissful Bowers: Arresting Idleness in the English Renaissance; Abigail Scherer
4. Idleness, Apprentices, and Machines in Deloney and Dekker; Emily Anglin
5. Idleness, Class, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century; Sarah Jordan
6. The Performativity of Idleness: Representations and Stagings of Idleness in the Context of Colonialism; Monika Fludernik
7. Dramas of Idleness: The Comedy of Manners in the Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oscar Wilde; Kerstin Fest
8. Idleness and Creativity: Poetic Disquisitions on Idleness in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries; Richard Adelman
9. Versions of Working-Class Idleness: Non-Productivity and the Critique of Victorian Workaholism; Benjamin Kohlmann
10. Against Busyness: Idling in Victorian and Contemporary Travel Writing; Barbara Korte
11. Tramping: The Cult of the Vagabond in Early Twentieth-Century England; Simon Featherstone
12. Englishness, Summer, and the Pastoral of Country Leisure in Twentieth-Century Literature; Leonie Wanitzek
13. Sociology of Leisure and the Wars of the Lifestyle Gurus; Ken Roberts
Epilogue: Remember that Time is Knowledge, Health and Happiness: On the Mysterious Disappearance of Leisure; Hartmut Rosa
Bibliography
Index