Narratives of Enlightenment

Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon

Karen O'Brien author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:5th Jun '97

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Narratives of Enlightenment cover

A reappraisal of the work of five major narrative historians (Voltaire, Hume, Robertson, Gibbon and Ramsay) in eighteenth-century Europe and America.

Narratives of Enlightenment reappraises the work of five of the most important narrative historians of the eighteenth century - Voltaire, David Hume, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon, and the historian of the American Revolution, David Ramsay - and reveals the development of cosmopolitan ways of thinking beyond national issues.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.

'Compellingly lucid and elegant.' Sir Tony Wrigley, President of the British Academy

  • Winner of Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 1999

ISBN: 9780521465335

Dimensions: 236mm x 160mm x 24mm

Weight: 580g

268 pages