Barbarism and Religion (Barbarism and Religion 2 Volume Paperback Set) - Softcover

Pocock, J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521797594 ISBN 13: 9780521797597

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in London and brought up in Christchurch, New Zealand, J. G. A. Pocock was educated at the Universities of Canterbury and Cambridge, and was for many years (1974-1994) Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. His many seminal works on intellectual history include The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (1957, Second Edition 1987), Politics, Language and Time (1971), The Machiavellian Moment (1975), and Virtue, Commerce and History (1985). He has also edited The Political Works of James Harrington (1977) and Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1987), as well as the collaborative study The Varieties of British Political Thought (1995). A Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society, Professor Pocock is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society.

Review:

"Thus we come back to the English Enlightenment and the point from which John Pocock set out on his magnificent tour de force" Nicholas Tyacke, Times Literary Supplement

"...one admires the breadth of his erudition. Indeed, like Gibbon, [J.G.A. Pocock] is a truly enlightened historian, one who takes ideas seriously and who has no patience for those of our own age who would 'deny the reality of authors and the readability of texts.'" T.H. Breen, New York Times Book Review

"John Pocock is the doyen of contemporary intellectual historians. His eagerly awaited book is a major event in the study of Gibbon in his intellectual context." Professor John Burrow, Balliol College, Oxford

"If there is a single target of my criticism it is the concept of 'The Enlightenment,' as a unified phenomenon with a single history and definition, but the criticism is directed more against the article than against the noun. I have no quarrel with the concept of Enlightenment; I merely contend that it occurred in too many forms to be comprised within a single definition and history, and that we do better to think of a family of Enlightenments, displaying both family resemblances and family quarrels (some of them bitter and even bloody)..." --From the Introduction to Volume 1

"...an ambitious effort to examine the enlightenment through Gibbon's eyes." David Armitage, Lingua Franca

"This is a lucidly written, highly intelligent work." Greenwich, CT Time

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521797594
• ISBN 13: 9780521797597
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356