Aspects of the Eighteenth Century PDF
Preview Aspects of the Eighteenth Century
ASPECTS of the Eighteenth Century ASPECTS of In 1963 The Johns Hopkins University inaugurated an annual series of doctoral and postdoctoral seminars in the Humanities by devoting the year to studies of the eighteenth century. This volume is composed of the lectures delivered before that seminar by the distinguished extramural scholars who were invited to participate. In recognition of the complex and many-faceted nature of the eighteenth century, we intentionally ne¬ glected to focus on any single theme that might artificially bind the sessions together, and the chapters in this book display the rich variety of perspectives in which the culture of that age may be viewed. On behalf of the Seminars I thank the contributors for having taken part in our meetings and for having made this volume possible. E. R. W. The Humanities Seminars The Johns Hopkins University the Eighteenth Century Edited by EARL R. WASSERMAN The Johns Hopkins Press Baltimore, Maryland, 19^5 ©1965 by The Johns Hopkins Press Baltimore, Maryland 21218 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 65-13521 This book was published with the assistance of a grant from The Ford Foundation. Contents In Search of the Age of Reason. 7 George Boas The Malleability of Man in Eighteenth-Century Thought. 27 J. A. Passmore Herder and the Enlightenment. 47 Isaiah Berlin The Term and Concept of “Classicism” in Literary History. 105 Rene Wellek Diderot and Historical Painting. 129 Jean Seznec t Imitation, Eclecticism, and Genius. 143 R. Wittkower Taste, Style, and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Music. 163 Edward E. Lowinsky V vt Contents Secretum Iter: Some Uses of Retirement Literature in the Poetry of Pope. 207 Maynard Mack The English Poet and the Burden of the Past, 1660-1820 . 245 W. J. Bate The Influence of English Fiction on the French Mid-Eighteenth-Century Novel. 265 Georges May The Tree of Knowledge and the Sin of Science: Vegetation Symbols in Goethe’s Faust.281 Heinz Politzer The Enlightenment and the French Revolution . 305 Alfred Cobban Where the Statue Stood: Divergent Loyalties to Newton in the Eighteenth Century.317 Henry Guerlac Index. 335 In Search oj the Age Reason GEORGE BOAS BY Though it seems to be convenient to divide history into ages and periods and times, it is questionable whether the practice has not been abused. We have pretty nearly got rid of the Renaissance by splitting it up into the Early Renaissance, the High Renaissance, and the baroque, which breathed its last as the rococo. We have also found that there were proto-Renaissances occurring in what used to be the Middle Ages, the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the twelfth century being the most important. Something similar has happened to the Romantic Period, which has been pushed forward into the twentieth century and backward at least to the time of Racine; whereas in my youth it was ushered in by the publication of the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and came to an end with the death of Scott (1832), which was also the date of the death of Goethe. This sort of thing was trouble enough, but added to the problem of chronological termini was that of determining the so-called spirit of such ages and movements. Nowadays we seldom use the term Zeitgeist, but we have little hesitation in using its equivalents. Thus terms like the Spirit of the Age, the Intellectual Climate, and the Time or Times have become common usage. As rough statistical generalizations denoting the modal, interests of a chronological division, these words are harmless. But there is genuine harm when they are put to explanatory uses. There can be no denying the similarity of purpose among, for instance, the members of the group known as Encyclopedists, though no two of them agreed about everything. They agreed that education was a good, indeed the best, instrument for improving society, and d’Alembert agreed with Diderot that the manual and liberal arts were of equal importance. On most other points they disagreed. However to say that 1
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