Publisher's Synopsis
1650-1850: Ideas, Æsthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era takes a focused but multidisciplinary approach to the "long eighteenth century," the two hundred years during which the writers and artists explored, developed, and represented a complex program of modernisation or "Enlightenment." Covering a period that begins with the revolutionary thought of Thomas Hobbes and the surprising establishment of a Commonwealth government and that ends with the careers of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, 1650-1850 publishes essays treating the aesthetic and philosophical side of this period of deep social transformation. This annual includes studies on the literature, philosophy, theology, art, music, architecture, and personalities of the period. It publishes many essays on British topics but also includes studies from various cultures, from Vietnam and Romania to Peru and the arctic. It seeks to discover connections among the various arts and intellectual pursuits and also to provide a venue for specialised studies not suitable for less experimental journals. 1650-1850 always includes fifteen to twenty extended reviews, reviews that examine major scholarly studies and editions in detail and with robust honesty. Volume 20 ContentsA. G. Monaco, Loyalty Oaths: A Reminder from the EnlightenmentFlorian Vauleon, Philosophizing the Game: The Morals of Chess in Diderot's Rameau's NephewAshley Marshall, Swift and TempleMurray L. Brown, Marketing the "Good Man": Sir Charles Grandison and the ClementinasNorbert Col, Burke's Target in A Vindication of Natural Society: From Bolingbroke to "this sort of Writers," or an Early Burkean Defense of Church and StateSpecial FeatureUnorthodox Transportation and the EnlightenmentEdited and Introduced by Jessika WichnerSpecial feature introductionDorit Engster, The Paddle Wheel Boat: A Technical Invention of Late AntiquityFrieda Koeninger and Raquel Gutiérrez Estupiñán, Seafaring Nuns: The Journey of Six Capuchin Sisters from Toledo to Mexico City, 1665Melvin Peña, Cosmopolitan Friendship in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to CorsicaJessika Wichner, Winter Travelers: Captain Jones's Treatise on Skating.
