Dilemmas of enlightenment : studies in the rhetoric and logic of ideology / / Oscar Kenshur [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910495860503321
• Autore: Kenshur Oscar <1942->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Berkeley, : University of California Press, c1993
• ISBN: 0-520-91346-9; 0-585-03180-0
• Edizione: [Reprint 2020]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (x, 258 p. )
• Collana: The New historicism Dilemmas of enlightenment
• Disciplina: 801
• Soggetti: Literature - Philosophy; Ideology in literature; Toleration in literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Ideological Essentialism and How to Avoid It -- 2. Dryden's Religio Laid and the Politics of Scriptural Deism -- 3. Bayle's Theory of Toleration: The Politics of Certainty and Doubt -- 4. Paganism, Christianity, and the Social Order -- 5. Cosmic Politics and Counter-hypothetical Fictions -- 6. Authorized Expérience: Narration and Moral Knowledge in Rasselas -- Notes -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Oscar Kenshur combines trenchant analyses of important early-modern texts with a powerful critique of postmodern theories of ideology. He thereby contributes both to our understanding of Enlightenment thought and to contemporary debates about cultural studies and critical theory. While striving to resolve "dilemmas" occasioned by conflicting intellectual and political commitments, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers often relied upon ideas originally used by their enemies to support very different claims. Thus, they engaged in what Kenshur calls "intellectual co-optation." In exploring the ways in which Dryden, Bayle, Voltaire, Johnson, and others used this technique, Kenshur presents a historical landscape distinctly different from the one constructed by much contemporary theory.