Narratives of enlightenment : cosmopolitan history from Voltaire to Gibbon / Karen O'Brien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brien, Karen (Karen Elisabeth), author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 34.

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 34

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and history--History--18th century.

Literature and history.

Enlightenment.

Intellectual life--History--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 249 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Narratives of Enlightenment is an interdisciplinary study of cosmopolitan approaches to the past. It reappraises the work of five of the most important narrative historians of the century - Voltaire, David Hume, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon and the historian of the American Revolution, David Ramsay - in the context of political and national debates in France, Scotland, England and America; and it investigates the nature and degree of their intellectual investment in the idea of a common European civilisation. Karen O'Brien combines the methodologies of literary criticism and intellectual history to explore debates about Enlightenments and the political uses of narrative. Where previous studies have emphasised the growth of nationalism in eighteenth-century literature, she reveals the development of cosmopolitan ways of thinking beyond national cultural issues.

Contents:

Introduction: cosmopolitanism, narrative, history

Voltaire's neoclassical poetics of history

European contexts in Hume's History of England

William Robertson to the rescue of Scottish history

Robertson on the triumph of Europe and its empires

Emulation and revival: Gibbon's Decline and fall of the Roman Empire

David Ramsay's sceptical history of the American Revolution

Afterwood

Selected secondary studies of the work of individual historians

Selected general studies of historical writing in the eighteenth century.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-243) and index.

ISBN:

9781139085700

1139085700

9780511519079

0511519079

9780511007156

0511007159

Publisher Number:

2027/heb07654 hdl