Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMankin’s superb edition of the Essai, one of the greatest products of a truly international Republic of Letters, allows a great work of criticism, a civilised and civilizing text, to come back into fructifying circulation.
-
Essays in CriticismL’ouvrage de Mankin propose une lecture très fouillée du texte de Gibbon avec de nombreuses incursions dans d’autres œuvres de l’auteur comme l’Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l’Empire romain et les Mémoires. Il s’appuie sur des références multiples en soulignant notamment la modernité de la demarche historiographique de Gibbon dès les années 1760, bien avant la publication de l’Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l’Empire Romain.
-
Les Lettres romanesMankin’s edition is a remarkable effort to try and elucidate the genesis and status of the Essai, in the light both of the contemporary history of ideas and publications, in France and in England, and of Gibbon’s own intellectual development [...] This volume has the scrupulous precision of the whole SVEC collection, and the Voltaire Foundation must again be praised for its continuous and rare support of erudite research on the Enlightenment period. With the profusion of Mankin’s references and sources, and the way he succeeds in making them resonate through Gibbon’s text, this critical edition proves a very rewarding read for all of those interested in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century.
-
CerclesTable of ContentsGuide to this edition
Abbreviations
Introduction
Circumstances of writing
Character of the text
‘France’: a context
From Belles-Lettres to littérature
The rise of the author
Religions of the mind
Textual apparatus
Essai sur l’étude de la littérature
- To Edward Gibbon
- Avis au lecteur
- A l’auteur
- Essai sur l’étude de la littérature
Textual commentary
Bibliography
Index
