Collection(s) : Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century
Paru le 13/07/2010 | Broché X-369 pages
Professionnels
préface et commentaires Robert Mankin | édition Patricia B. Craddock
Before he had even conceived of the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire there was another Edward Gibbon, a young expatriate living in Switzerland and writing in French. In the Essai, a work of remarkable erudition and energy largely finished by the age of twenty-one, Gibbon reflects on the present state of knowledge in post-Renaissance Europe - what he calls littérature.
The first complete edition of the Essai since 1761, this volume sets Gibbon's work in its intellectual context. A detailed introduction examines the biographical, cultural and historical background to this text: the young writer's perception of European intellectual life as he observed it from Lausanne, his relation to the Encyclopédie and the French académies, the fate of erudition, and the modern organization of learning in books. An extensive commentary concludes this edition, providing invaluable annotation of each chapter, including the important but little-known sections on religion that were replaced by Gibbon in the final text.
As current debates revisit the meaning of Enlightenment, readers will find in this edition of Gibbon's Essai a new approach to the intellectual networks and tensions that lie at its heart.
Robert Mankin is Professor of English studies at the Université Paris-Diderot where he teaches intellectual history. The author of studies on Gibbon, Hume, Locke and Smith, he is currently researching the interpretation of British empiricism from the standpoint of book history. The text of the Essai was prepared by Patricia Craddock, Emerita Professor, University of Florida.
