The Atlantic Enlightenment

Francis D. Cogliano, Susan Manning

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754660408
• eBook ISBN: 9781351894258
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire

Transatlantic studies, especially during the enlightenment period, is of increasing critical interest amongst scholars. But was there an Atlantic Enlightenment? This interdisciplinary collection harnesses the work of some of the most prominent figures in the fields of literature; intellectual, cultural, and social history; geography; and political science to examine the emergence of the Atlantic as one of the key conceptual paradigms of eighteenth century studies. In this spirit, the contributors offer new insights into the conditions that generated a major transatlantic genre of writing; addressing questions of race, political economy, and the transmission of Enlightenment ideas in literary, political, historical, and religious contexts. Whether examining John Witherspoon's evolution from Calvinist theologian to Revolutionary theorist, or Adam Smith's reception in the antebellum United States, the essays remind us that the transatlantic traffic in ideas moved from west to east, from east to west, and in patterns that both complicate and enrich what we thought we knew about the vectors of transmission in this pivotal period.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• 1 Enlightenment Historiography and Cultural Civil Wars
• 2 Where was the Atlantic Enlightenment?—Questions of Geography
• 3 John Witherspoon and the Transatlantic Enlightenment
• 4 David Hume and the Seagods of the Atlantic
• 5 The Atlantic Enlightenment and German Responses to the American Revolution, c. 1775 to c. 1800
• 6 Transatlantic Cervantics: Don Quixote and the Fictions of American Enlightenment
• 7 Placing The Power of Sympathy: Transatlantic Sentiments and the ‘First American Novel’
• 8 Adam Smith and the Crisis of the American Union
• 9 The Enlightenment at Sea in the Atlantic World
• Works Cited
• Index