Peripheries of the Enlightenment

Volume: 2008:01

Series: SVEC

Volume Editors: Richard Butterwick, Simon Davies

Series Collaborators: Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen; Simon Burrows, University of Leeds; Richard Butterwick, University College London; Fiona Clark, Queen’s University Belfast; Simon Davies, Queen’s University Belfast; Simon Dixon, University of Leeds; Martin Fitzpatrick, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Graham Gargett, University of Ulster; Ultán Gillen, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London; Lynda Pratt, University of Nottingham; Peter Hanns Reill, University of California, Los Angeles, CA; John Robertson, St Hugh’s College, Oxford; Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa, Queen’s University Belfast; Marie-Christine Skuncke, University of Uppsala; Orsolya Szakály, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.<br>

Publication Date: 2008

Pages: 349

ISBN: 978-0-7294-0926-1

Price: £70

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‘Enlightenment’ is a universal concept, but its meaning is most clearly revealed by seeing how it was engaged with, reconfigured or rejected, on a local level. Peripheries of the Enlightenment seeks to rethink the ‘centre/periphery’ model, and to consider the Enlightenment as a more widely spread movement with national, regional and local varieties, focusing on activity as much as ideas.

The debate is introduced by two chapters which explore the notion of periphery from vantage points at the very heart of ‘enlightened’ Europe: Ferney and Geneva. Through thirteen ensuing chapters, the interaction between ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘periphery’ is explored in a variety of spatial and temporal contexts ranging from Mexico to Russia. Drawing on urban and provincial as well as national case studies, contributors argue that we can learn at least as much about the Enlightenment from commentators at the geographical and cultural borders of the ‘enlightened’ world as from its most radical theorists in its early epicentres.

Crossing the boundaries between histories of literature, religion, science and political and economic thought, Peripheries of the Enlightenment is not only international in its outlook but also interdisciplinary in its scope, and offers readers a new and more global vision of the Enlightenment.

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Richard Butterwick, Peripheries of the Enlightenment: an introduction
Simon Davies, Whither/wither France: Voltaire’s view from Ferney
Graham Gargett, French periphery, European centre: eighteenth-century Geneva and its contribution to the Enlightenment
Michael Brown, Was there an Irish Enlightenment? The case of the Anglicans
John Robertson, Political economy and the ‘feudal system’ in Enlightenment Naples: outline of a problem
Marie-Christine Skuncke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Swedish eyes around 1760
Orsolya Szakály, Enlightened self-interest: the development of an entrepreneurial culture within the Hungarian elite
Martin Fitzpatrick, The view from Mount Pleasant: Enlightenment in late eighteenth-century Liverpool
Simon Burrows, Grub Street revolutionaries: marginal writers at the Enlightenment’s periphery?
Ultán Gillen, Varieties of Enlightenment: the Enlightenment and Irish political culture in the age of revolutions
Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa, An ilustrado in his province: Jovellanos in Asturias
Richard Butterwick, Between Anti-Enlightenment and enlightened Catholicism: provincial preachers in late eighteenth-century Poland-Lithuania
Simon Dixon, ‘Prosveshchenie’: Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Russia
Fiona Clark, The Gazeta de Literatura de México and the edge of reason: when is a periphery not a periphery?
Lynda Pratt, Tea and national history? Ann Yearsley, John Thelwall and the late eighteenth-century provincial English epic
Peter Hanns Reill, The Enlightenment from the German periphery: Johann Herder’s reinterpretation of the Enlightenment
Summaries
Bibliography
Index

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