Barbarism and Religion: Volume 1, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764'Barbarism and Religion' - Edward Gibbon's own phrase - is the title of an acclaimed sequence of works by John Pocock designed to situate Gibbon, and his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in a series of contexts in the history of eighteenth-century Europe. This is a major intervention from one of the world's leading historians of ideas, challenging the notion of any one 'Enlightenment' and positing instead a plurality of enlightenments, of which the English was one. In this first volume, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, John Pocock follows Gibbon through his youthful exile in Switzerland and his criticisms of the Encyclopédie, and traces the growth of his historical interests down to the conception of the Decline and Fall itself. |
Contents
Putney Oxford and the question of English Enlightenment | 13 |
The visit to Stourhead and the venture into Anglican historiography | 28 |
a crisis in authority | 43 |
Lausanne and the Arminian Enlightenment | 51 |
method unbelief | 72 |
The Hampshire militia and the problems of modernity | 94 |
erudition and the search for a narrative | 121 |
The politics of scholarship in French and English | 137 |
Erudition and Enlightenment in the Académie | 152 |
of history | 169 |
imagination irony | 208 |
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS | 255 |
Gibbon and the rhythm that was different | 292 |
| 309 | |
| 324 | |
Common terms and phrases
Académie des Inscriptions ancient Anglican antiquity Arminian arts authority barbarism and religion Bayle became belles-lettres Calvinist century Christ Christian Church of England civil society clerical Cluverius connoissances context critical critique culture d'Alembert debate Decline and Fall deism Discours préliminaire doctrine ecclesiastical Edward Gibbon encounter Encyclopédie English Enlightenment erudition esprit Essai sur l'étude Europe European fait France French Freret gens de lettres grand historian historiography hommes Huguenot human humanist Hume idées imagination intellectual J. C. D. Clark Jean Le Clerc Journal l'érudition l'esprit l'histoire language langues Latin Lausanne learning letters literature littérature Louis XIV militia mind modern monarchy Montesquieu narrative nature Paris Parisian philosophes Pocock political Protestant Protestantism qu'il reason recognised république des lettres Revolution Rome scepticism scholars scholarship Schwab sciences Scottish siècle société Socinian spirit Stourhead Swiss term theology tout Vaud virtue Voltaire volume Womersley writing