Introduction: Happiness and unhappiness in Eighteenth-century English literature

Introduction to journal issue on "Happiness (and Unhappiness) in Eighteenth-century English Literature", issue edited by this author. The "Introduction" deals with the major issues regarding the long eighteenth-century ideas of happiness, as deriving from philosophical interpretations of man's self, empiricism, iatromechanical theories of the body, Latitudinarian homiletics and theology, etc., and with special regard to literature. It shows that most ideas were concerned with secularized versions of a long-standing metaphysical thought about man's destiny, and with the transformation of the ethical, social and political domains into psychology. Happiness thus became one's individual, personal, exclusive happiness. At the same time, by introducing the seven essays contained in the journal issue, the article shows the complex debate the several ideas of happiness were undergoing in the "transition from the happiness of virtue to the virtue of happiness" (Derrin McMahon).