Enlightenment virtue, 1680-1794 / edited by James Fowler and Marine Ganofsky.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fowler, J. E. (James E.), editor.

Ganofsky, Marine, editor.

Series:

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 0435-2866 2020:03.

Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 0435-2866 ; 2020:03

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Literature, Modern--18th century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Virtue.

Virtue in literature.

Ethics--History--18th century.

Ethics.

Civilization--18th century.

Civilization.

Enlightenment--Europe.

Enlightenment.

History.

Europe.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool ; Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, [2020]

Language Note:

In English with parts in French.

Summary:

In a speech delivered in 1794, roughly one year after the execution of Louis XVI, Robespierre boldly declared Terror to be an 'emanation of virtue'. In adapting the concept of virtue to Republican ends, Robespierre was drawing on traditions associated with ancient Greece and Rome. But Republican tradition formed only one of many strands in debates concerning virtue in France and elsewhere in Europe, from 1680 to the Revolution. This collection focuses on moral-philosophical and classical-republican uses of 'virtue' in this period - one that is often associated with a 'crisis of the European mind'. It also considers in what ways debates concerning virtue involved gendered perspectives. The texts discussed are drawn from a range of genres, from plays and novels to treatises, memoirs, and libertine literature. They include texts by authors such as Diderot, Laclos, and Madame de Staël, plus other, lesser-known texts that broaden the volume's perspective. Collectively, the contributors to the volume highlight the central importance of virtue for an understanding of an era in which, as Daniel Brewer argues in the closing chapter, 'the political could not be thought outside its moral dimension, and morality could not be separated from inevitable political consequences'. Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction: virtue and the secular turn, 1680-1794 p. 1 / James Fowler and Marine Ganofsky

Virtue before the Enlightenment p. 37 / Michael Moriarty

Vertu et Lumières: Bayle's 'virtuous atheist' and its afterlives p. 59 / Nicholas Treuherz

Secular virtue: echoes of Shaftesbury in Diderot p. 77 / James Fowler

From the religious virtues to Enlightenment virtue p. 93 / Alicia C. Montoya

Bernard-Joseph Saurin, the comédie de mæurs and the civic function of plays p. 109 / Ioana Galleron

Acting honnête: effeminacy, masculinity and the ethos of social virtue in Enlightenment comedy p. 123 / Karen Nehlsen Manna

The softness of the petit-maître and the decay of virtus p. 139 / Jean-Alexandre Perras

'La vera nobiltà non consiste in altro che nella virtù': a woman's view on virtue, or Henriette de Marans's nobility p. 155 / Mathilde Chollet

Virtue and invisibility: libertine variations on the myth of Gyges p. 169 / Marine Ganofsky

Female virtue and bliss in the eighteenth century p. 187 / Lydia Vázquez

The politics of virtue: Réflexions sur le procès de la reine by Mme de Staël p. 199 / Pierre Saint-Amano

Robespierre's virtue in Marx and Tocqueville p. 211 / Patrice Higonnet

Virtue and the ethics of the virtual p. 235 / Daniel Brewer.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-274) and index.

ISBN:

9781789620412

1789620414

OCLC:

1119749159