This series features monographs that take an innovative and challenging look at the political and intellectual history of the Enlightenment period. The richness of the Enlightenment experience makes it a significant topic for study. It had a profound impact on nearly every aspect of life during the long eighteenth century and many of its values are familiar to modern society. Some of the key themes that this series embraces include the scientific revolution; philosophical origins and progress of the Enlightenment; high and popular culture; the political impact of the Enlightenment; and its comparative impact in a broad European context.
Series Editor: Michael T Davis (Griffith University)
Series Co-Editors: Jack Fruchtman (Towson University)
Kevin Gilmartin (Caltech)
Jon Mee (University of York)
By Wayne Hudson
January 20, 2016
The writers known as the English deists were not simply religious controversialists, but agents of reform who contributed to the emergence of modernity. This title claims that these writers advocated a failed ideology which itself declined after 1730. It argues for an evolution of their ideas into ...
By David Worrall
January 20, 2016
Under the 1737 Licensing Act, Covent Garden, Dury Lane and regional Theatres Royal held a monopoly on the dramatic canon. This work explores the presentation of foreign cultures and ethnicities on the popular British stage from 1750 to 1840. It argues that this illegitimate stage was the site for a...
Edited
By Steve Poole
January 20, 2016
John Thelwall was a Romantic and Enlightenment polymath. In 1794 he was tried and acquitted of high treason, earning himself the disdainful soubriquet 'acquitted felon' from Secretary of State for War, William Windham. Later, Thelwall's interests turned to poetry and plays, and was a collaborator ...
By Ursula Haskins Gonthier
January 20, 2016
Gonthier sets Montesquieu's work in the context of early eighteenth-century Anglo-French relations, taking a comparative approach to show how Montesquieu's engagement with English thought and writing persisted throughout his writing career....
By Alexander Cook
January 20, 2016
The Enlightenment era saw European thinkers increasingly concerned with what it meant to be human. This collection of essays traces the concept of ‘humanity’ through revolutionary politics, feminist biography, portraiture, explorer narratives, libertine and Orientalist fiction, the philosophy of ...
By Michelle Faubert
January 20, 2016
During the Romantic era, psychology and literature enjoyed a fluid relationship. Faubert focuses on psychologist-poets who grew out of the literary-medical culture of the Scottish Enlightenment. They used poetry as an accessible form to communicate emerging psychological, cultural and moral ideas....
By Ariyuki Kondo
January 20, 2016
During the second half of the eighteenth century British architecture moved away from the dominant school of classicism in favour of a more creative freedom of expression. At the forefront of this change were architect brothers Robert and James Adam. Kondo’s work places them within the context of ...
Edited
By Christoph Bode, Jacqueline Labbe
January 20, 2016
Romantic Localities explores the ways in which Romantic-period writers of varying nationalities responded to languages, landscapes – both geographical and metaphorical – and literatures....
Edited
By David Burrow, Scott Brueninger
January 20, 2016
This collection of essays expands the focus of Enlightenment studies to include countries outside the core nations of France, Germany and Britain. Notions of sociability and cosmopolitanism are explored as ways in which people sought to improve society....
By Michael Scrivener
January 20, 2016
Examines the new internationalism which emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment. This is the study of cosmopolitanism, which takes into account feminist and post-colonial critiques of the Enlightenment. It also offers cosmopolitanism as a solution to contemporary struggles to reach a ...
By Wayne Hudson
January 20, 2016
Interprets the works of an important group of writers known as 'the English deists'. This title argues that this interpretation reads Romantic conceptions of religious identity into a period in which it was lacking. It contextualizes these writers within the early Enlightenment, which was ...
By Jonathan Lamb
January 20, 2016
This work represents a concise history of sympathy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, considering the phenomenon of shared feeling from five related angles: charity, the market, global exploration, theatre, and torture....