'Barbarism and Religion' - Edward Gibbon's own phrase - is the title of an acclaimed sequence of works by John Pocock designed to situate Gibbon, and his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in a series of contexts in the history of eighteenth-century Europe. This is a major intervention from one of the world's leading historians of ideas, challenging the notion of any one 'Enlightenment' and positing instead a plurality of enlightenments, of which the English was one. In this first volume, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, John Pocock follows Gibbon through his youthful exile in Switzerland and his criticisms of the Encyclopédie, and traces the growth of his historical interests down to the conception of the Decline and Fall itself.
Introduction; Part I. England and Switzerland, 1737-1763: 1. Putney, Oxford and the question of English Enlightenment; 2. Lausanne and the Arminian Enlightenment; 3. The re-education of young Gibbon: method, unbelief and the turn towards history; 4. The Hampshire militia and the problems of modernity; 5. Study in the camp: erudition and the search for a narrative; Part II. The Encounter with Paris and the Defence of Erudition, 1761-1763: 6. The politics of scholarship in French and English Enlightenment; 7. Erudition and Enlightenment in the Académie des Inscriptions; 8. D'Alembert's Discours Preliminaire: the philosophe perception of history; 9. The Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature: imagination, irony and history; 10. Paris and the gens de lettres: experience and recollection; Part III. Lausanne and Rome: The Journey Towards a Subject, 1763-1765: 11. The return to Lausanne and the pursuit of erudition; 12. The journey to Rome and the transformation of intentions; Epilogue: Gibbon and the rhythm that was different; Bibliographies; Index.
