Barbarism and Religion

by J. G. A. Pocock

• ISBN13: 9780521633451
• ISBN10: 0521633451
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

'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 Encyclopèdie, and traces the growth of his historical interests down to the conception of the Decline and Fall itself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Note on references, quotations and translations	xii
List of abbreviations	xiv
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I ENGLAND AND SWITZERLAND, 1737-1763
Putney, Oxford and the question of English Enlightenment	13	(37)
The Gibbon family and the crisis in church and state	13	(15)
The visit to Stourhead and the venture into Anglican historiography	28	(15)
Gibbon at Oxford: a crisis in authority	43	(7)
Lausanne and the Arminian Enlightenment	50	(22)
The re-education of young Gibbon: method, unbelief and the turn towards history	72	(22)
The Hampshire militia and the problems of modernity	94	(27)
Study in the camp: erudition and the search for a narrative	121	(16)
PART II THE ENCOUNTER WITH PARIS AND THE DEFENCE OF ERUDITION, 1761-1763
The Politics of scholarship in French and English Enlightenment	137	(15)
Erudition and Enlightenment in the Academie des Inscriptions	152	(17)
D'Alembert's Discours preliminaire: the philosophe perception of history	169	(39)
The Essai sur l'etude de la litterature: imagination, irony and history	208	(32)
Paris and the gens de letter: experience and recollection	240	(21)
PART III LAUSANNE AND ROME: THE JOURNEY TOWARDS A SUBJECT, 1763-1764
The return to Lausanne and the pursuit of erudition	261	(14)
The journey to Rome and the transformation of intentions	275	(34)
Epilogue: Gibbon and the rhythm that was different	292	(17)
List of references	309	(15)
Index	324