Enlightenment in Ruins: The Geographies of Oliver Goldsmith

di Michael Griffin (Autore)

Bucknell University Press, 2015

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) moved between the genres and geographies of enlightenment writing with considerable dexterity. As a consequence he has been characterized as a passive purveyor of enlightenment thought, a hack, a harried translator of the French enlightenment for an English audience, an ideological lackey, and a subtle ironist. In poetry, he is either a compliant pastoralist or an engaged social critic. Yet Goldsmith's career is as complex and as contradictory as the enlightenment currents across which he wrote, and there is in Goldsmith's oeuvre a set of themes-including his opposition to the new imperialism and to glibly declared principles of liberty-which this book addresses as a manifestation of his Irishness. Michael Griffin places Goldsmith in two contexts: one is the intellectual and political culture in which he worked as a professional author living in London; the other is that of his nationality and his as yet unstudied Jacobite politics. Enlightenment in Ruins thereby reveals a body of work that is compellingly marked by tensions and transits between Irishness and Englishness, between poetic and professional imperatives, and between cultural and scientific spheres.

• Autore: Michael Griffin
• Editore: Bucknell University Press
• Collana: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850
• Anno: 2015
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 226 p.
• Dimensioni: 225 x 154 mm
• Peso: 345 gr.
• EAN: 9781611486896

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