Simon Davies – författare

‘Enlightenment’ is a universal concept, but its meaning is most clearly revealed by seeing how it was engaged with, reconfigured or rejected, on a local level. Peripheries of the Enlightenment seeks to rethink the ‘centre/periphery’ model, and to consider the Enlightenment as a more widely spread movement with national, regional and local varieties, focusing on activity as much as ideas.The debate is introduced by two chapters which explore the notion of periphery from vantage points at the very heart of ‘enlightened’ Europe: Ferney and Geneva. Through thirteen ensuing chapters, the interaction between ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘periphery’ is explored in a variety of spatial and temporal contexts ranging from Mexico to Russia. Drawing on urban and provincial as well as national case studies, contributors argue that we can learn at least as much about the Enlightenment from commentators at the geographical and cultural borders of the ‘enlightened’ world as from its most radical theorists in its early epicentres.Crossing the boundaries between histories of literature, religion, science and political and economic thought, Peripheries of the Enlightenment is not only international in its outlook but also interdisciplinary in its scope, and offers readers a new and more global vision of the Enlightenment.

Ecrivain, philosophe, intellectuel, homme public, Voltaire dans sa diversité a été représenté de bien des manières au cours des siècles. Dans Les Vies de Voltaire: discours et représentations biographiques, XVIIIe – XXIe siècles, les éditeurs réunissent les travaux d’éminents spécialistes qui analysent l’histoire et l’enjeu de ces images à partir des différents discours biographiques sur Voltaire.L’analyse des représentations biographiques et de leur histoire proposée ici nécessite d’articuler différentes perspectives. La première est littéraire: la biographie, analysée en tant que genre, est confrontée à des formes telles que l’éloge, le recueil d’anecdotes, ou le dialogue des morts imaginaire, et située sur la frontière entre l’histoire et le roman, entre vérité et fiction, entre objectivité scientifique et polémique. L’autre perspective examine les enjeux idéologiques de ces nombreuses représentations de Voltaire depuis le dix-huitième siècle jusqu’à nos jours, en replaçant chacune d’elles dans son contexte historique particulier. Les études mettent en lumière les utilisations politiques ou polémiques des différentes images, souvent au service de nettes oppositions idéologiques (philosophes ou anti-philosophes, Lumières ou anti-Lumières). Ainsi par des analyses de cas et, le plus souvent possible, par des approches sérielles ou transversales, par l’examen comparé de ‘biographèmes’ et de stéréotypes, c’est bien une histoire des représentations que proposent les études ici reunies.Les Vies de Voltaire: discours et représentations biographiques, XVIIIe – XXIe siècles présente une exploration très large des manières dont Voltaire a été construit au fil de l’histoire. Plus de deux cents ans après sa mort, qu’en reste-t-il ? La progressive exténuation de cette icône et de ses usages nous obligent à nous demander à quelle société et à quelles valeurs elle peut encore nous renvoyer. Alors, plus que jamais l’idée de Voltaire interroge notre modernité.

The long eighteenth century was a period of major transformation for Europe and India as imperialism heralded a new global order. Eschewing the reductive perspectives of nation-state histories and postcolonial ‘east vs west’ oppositions, contributors to India and Europe in the global eighteenth century put forward a more nuanced and interdisciplinary analysis. Using eastern as well as western sources, authors present fresh insights into European and Indian relations and highlight:how anxieties over war and piracy shaped commercial activity;how French, British and Persian histories of India reveal the different geo-political issues at stake;the material legacy of India in European cultural life;how novels parodied popular views of the Orient and provided counter-narratives to images of India as the site of corruption;how social transformations, traditionally characterised as ‘Mughal decline’, in effect forged new global connections that informed political culture into the nineteenth century.

Although posterity has generally known Bernardin de Saint-Pierre for his bestselling Paul et Virginie, his output was encyclopaedic. Using new sources, this monograph explores the many facets of a celebrity writer in the Ancien Régime, the Revolution and the early nineteenth century.Bernardin attracted a readership to whom, irrespective of age, gender or social situation, he became a guide to living. He was nominated by Louis XVI to manage the Jardin des plantes, by Revolutionary bodies to teach at the École normale and to membership of the Institut. He deplored unquestioning adherence to Newtonian ideas, materialistic atheism and human misdeeds in what could be considered proto-ecological terms. He bemoaned analytical, reductionist approaches: his philosophy placed human beings at the centre of the universe and stressed the interconnectedness of cosmic harmony. Bernardin learned enormously from travel to Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean. He attacked slavery, championed a national education system and advocated justice for authors. Fresh information and interpretation show that he belonged to neither the philosophe or anti-philosophe camp. A reformist, he envisioned a regenerated France as a nation of liberty offering asylum for refugees.This study demonstrates the range of thought and expression of an incontournable polymath in an age of transformation.