Narratives of enlightenment : cosmopolitan history from Voltaire to Gibbon / / Karen O'Brien [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNISA996248112803316
• Autore: O'Brien Karen (Karen Elisabeth)
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1997
• ISBN: 1-139-08570-0; 0-511-51907-9; 0-511-00715-9
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xii, 249 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; ; 34
• Disciplina: 907/.2
• Soggetti: Literature and history - History - 18th century; Enlightenment; Intellectual life - History - 18th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-243) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 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.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.