Ireland and the French Enlightenment, 1700-1800

by Gargett, Graham

• ISBN13: 9780312220303
• ISBN10: 0312220308
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

By what channels did the French Enlightenment reach the eighteenth-century Irish reader, and what was its impact? What were the images of Ireland in current France? What did the philosophes like Montesquieu and Voltaire think of the country and its people? These are the questions a team of scholars attempts to answer in this volume. Part I explains who could read French; Part II examines the views of Ireland and the Irish; and Part III explores the transmission of ideas through the importation of French books and translations from a number of cosmopolitan centers.

Author Biography

Graham Gargett is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Ulster at Coleraine.

Geraldine Sheridan is Associate Professor of French at the University of Limerick.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	vii	(3)
Notes on the Contributors	x	(3)
Introduction and Acknowledgements	xiii
Part I Irish Readers and Readings	1	(126)
1 Readership in French: the Irish Experience	3	(18)
Maire Kennedy
2 Irish Literary Review Magazines and Enlightenment France: 1730-1790	21	(26)
Geraldine Sheridan
3 Montesquieu and Burke	47	(20)
Seamus Deane
4 Voltaire's Reception in Ireland	67	(23)
Graham Gargett
5 Rousseau in Eighteenth-Century Irish Journals: `A Wanton and Romantic Imagination'	90	(17)
Michael O'Dea
6 French Scientific Innovation in Late-Eighteenth-Century Dublin: the Hydrogen Balloon Experiments of Richard Crosbie (1783-1785)	107	(20)
Barbara Traxler Brown
Part II Ireland Seen from France	127	(44)
7 Attitudes towards Ireland and the Irish in Enlightenment France	129	(23)
Eamon O Ciosain
8 Voltaire's View of the Irish	152	(19)
Graham Gargett
Part III Tools of Transmission	171	(62)
9 The Trade in French Books in Eighteenth-Century Ireland	173	(24)
Maire Kennedy
Geraldine Sheridan
10 Ireland and the French Theatre	197	(16)
Simon Davies
11 Irish Church Libraries and the French Enlightenment	213	(20)
Jane McKee
Appendixes	233	(52)
Appendix 1 Literary Review Magazines Printed in Ireland, 1700-1790	235	(8)
Geraldine Sheridan
Appendix 2 List of Books Connected with the French Enlightenment, 1700-1800	243	(42)
Graham Gargett
Index	285