Description
Book SynopsisThe long eighteenth century is often seen as the age ‘when Europe spoke French’. After all, many of the leading figures of the Enlightenment were French and even a good number of authors in other countries chose this language to reach an audience beyond the borders of their homeland. Latin may have
served a similar purpose in the Renaissance, but by the eighteenth century its importance quickly declined. This view is simplistic and misleading and this volume seeks to refute it. The essays presented in this book demonstrate Latin continued to play a highly important role during the long eighteenth century, both within Europe and in interactions between the ‘West’ and the rest of the world. It sheds light on the reasons why Latin remained a key factor in eighteenth-century culture, as well as the contexts in which it was used. In so doing, this volume makes a significant contribution to current debates on the nature of the Enlightenment and its place in global history.
Table of ContentsList of figures and tables
I. Introduction
FLORIS VERHAART, Introduction: Latin and the Enlightenment
LAURENCE BROCKLISS, The empire of Latin
II. Constructing Identity
FLORIS VERHAART, A Humanist Identity in an Enlightened Age: Neo-Latin Poetry, Canon Building, and the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Dutch Republic
SIMON WIRTHENSOHN, Enlightened tendencies in eighteenth-century school theatre: the dramatic oeuvre of Joseph Resch
ANDREW LAIRD, Creole Latin legacies and the European Enlightenment
STEFAN TILG, Latin public, Latin literature, and Latin nationalism in eighteenth-century Hungary
III. Authority
KATHERINE A. EAST, Locating Latin in the heterodox exchanges of Enlightenment England: Toland and his critics
JOHN T. GILMORE, ‘Non interpres, sed poeta’: William Jones and his ‘Ode Sinica’
IV. Development of new ideas and knowledge
MALIKA BASTIN-HAMMOU, The uses of Latin in Madame Dacier’s Greek scholarship: a story of emancipation
MATTHEW FOX, Latin Critical Theory in the Early Eighteenth Century
NICHOLAS MITHEN, Vico among the critics: Latin and philology in the gestation of the Scienza Nuova
ALESSANDRO OTTAVIANI, Mapping diseases and dissecting landscapes: Giovan Battista Morgagni’s Latin prose from the Adversaria anatomica ot the Epistolae Aemilianae
V. Diffusion of Ideas
ESTELLE HAAN, Humanism and scientific invention in the Neo-Latin poetry of Enlightenment England
SCOTT MANDELBROTE, Newton in Latin: An Enlightenment Author and his European Audience
JAN PAPY, Lecture notes from Leuven University 1750-1793: The Scientific Enlightenment in the Eighteenth-Century Classroom?
ELENA DAHLBERG, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Latin Dissertations from Sweden, ca. 1755–1815
DANIEL WENDT, Ab omni verborum obscoenitate purgata? Latin obscenities, audiences, and humanism in the French Enlightenment
Author biographies
Summaries
Bibliography
Index
