Abstract:This essay opens by asking why the formative period in the “commercialization of leisure” in England (c. 1690–1760) happens also to be the period during which intrusion, obstruction, and interruption first began to thrive as conspicuous rhetorical techniques in commercial literature. The essay answers this question through a series of close readings that reveal the complex reciprocity between what I call “cultural diversion” and “discursive diversion,” between those social amusements which provide relief from … Show more
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.