Hemispheres and Stratospheres

KEVIN L. COPE is Adams Professor of English Literature and a member of the comparative literature faculty at Louisiana State University. Among his many books and edited collections are Criteria of Certainty, John Locke Revisited, and In and After the Beginning. He is also editor of the annual journal 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era.

“In eight wide-ranging essays by prominent scholars, this groundbreaking collection challenges how Enlightenment and long-eighteenth-century researchers need to reassess the interdisciplinary nature, cultural richness, and international scope of this topic. The study ventures into new territories in the international and cultural terrain of distance studies, uncovering uncharted research and future prospects in the digital humanities.” - Mark Pedreira (Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras) “With his characteristic intellectual amplitude, Kevin L. Cope presents in this volume essays on the eighteenth-century ‘prospect’ in art and literature, the function of distance in Italian architecture, the European travel of two South Indian priests, the dislocations and adaptations of ‘long distance’ imaginary voyages, and the possible advantages of ‘distant’ reading-among others. While novel in its core supposition, the volume pays respect to an older, distinguished scholarly orientation that is perfectly in line with our own multidisciplinary moment: the history of ideas.” - John Scanlan (coeditor of The Age of Johnson) "A valuable contribution to the growing body of theories and histories of distance." (The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats)

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionPart I: Best Seen at a Distance: The Art of the Far AwayLooking Down: Observations on Elevation, Prospect Vision, and Eighteenth-Century ImaginationRoger D. LundSpace and the Meaning of Distance in Bernardo Vittone’s ArchitectureWilliam StargardChange of Air, Change of Self: Long Distance and Human Adaptability in Imaginary Voyages of the Long Eighteenth CenturyBÄrbel CzenniaPart II: Culture Over and As DistanceDistant Lands, Distant Races, Distant Cultures: Two Eighteenth-Century South Indian Priests Go to EuropeBrijraj SinghConnecting Hemispheres, Playing with Distance:  Rammohun Roy, an Indian TransnationalistChandrava ChakravartyPart III: The Nature of DistanceNew Science, Distant Reading, and Distance as IntersubjectivityRachel MannOrbiting Iambs: Enlightenment Cosmology and Conveniently Condensed ImmensitiesKevin L. CopeJourneys to the Edge: The Idea and Experience of Distance in Archival ResearchPhyllis ThompsonAcknowledgmentsBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex