Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1968. The contribution of eighteenth-century Englishmen to the study of medieval life and literature is fairly well known, but it is commonly assumed that in France, the center of Enlightenment, no onewith the exception of a few obscure antiquarianswas seriously interested in the Middle Ages. Gossman argues that the Enlightenment gave great impetus to medieval studies in France and altered their orientation, removing them from the realm of legal and ecclesiastical dispute and bringing them into a new framework of general history. Concentrating his investigation of Enlightenment medievalists on the most influential of them, La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Gossman describes Sainte-Palaye's social and intellectual milieu and follows him in his relations with scholars and philosophes in France and abroad. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Gibbon, Walpole, Muratori, and Herder are some of the figures whose paths crossed that of Sainte-Palaye. Far from being opposed to philosophie, t
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Abbreviations Frequently Used in Notes
Part I: An Eighteenth-Century Scholar and His World
Chapter 1. Background and Education
Chapter 2. A Diplomatic Career
Chapter 3. Interllectual Societies, Salons, and Friends
Chapter 4. Scholars of the robe and philosophes
Chapter 5. Amateur of the Arts and Royal Acadmician
Part II. New Approaches to Medieval Studies
Part III. Works of Medieval Scholarship
Chapter 1. Language
Chapter 2. The Publication of Documents Relative to French History
Chapter 3. Catalogues of Manuscripts Relative to Medieval History: The Notices de manuscits
Chapter 4. Problems and Methods of Editing Medieval Texts
Chapter 5. Study of the Chronicle Sources of Medieval History
Chapter 6. Studey of the LIterary Sources of Medieval History
Chapter 7. The Questions of the Publication of Medieval Tests
Chapter 8. The Dictionnaire des antiquites
Chapter 9. The Memoires sur l'ancienne chevaleria and the Memoires historiques sur la chasse
Chapter 10. The Historie litteraire des troubadours
Part IV: Conclusion: Medievalism and Enlightenment
Chapter 1. The Contribution of Sainte-Palaye to the Thought of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Discussion of Medievalism in the Enlightenment
Chapter 2. The Place of Sainte-Palaye's Word in the History of Historiography and of Historical Scholarship
Appendices
Index
