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The Persian mirror : French reflections of the Safavid empire in early modern France
The Persian Mirror explores France's preoccupation with Persia in the seventeenth century. Long before Montesquieu's Persian Letters, French intellectuals, diplomats and even ordinary Parisians were fascinated by Persia and eagerly consumed travel accounts, fairy tales, and the spectacle the Persian ambassador's visit to Paris and Versailles in 1715. Using diplomatic sources, fiction and printed and painted images, The Persian Mirror describes how the French came to see themselves in Safavid Persia. In doing so, it revises our notions of orientalism and the exotic and suggests that early modern Europeans had more nuanced responses to Asia than previously imagined.
Book
Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France
Collecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.
eBook
Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind
The French Revolution swept away the Old Regime along with many
of its ideas about epistemology, history, society, and politics. In
the intellectual ferment that followed, debates about religion
figured prominently as diverse thinkers grappled with the
philosophical and civil status of religion in a post-revolutionary
age. Arthur McCalla demonstrates the central place of religion in
the intellectual life of post-revolutionary France in Religion
and the Post-revolutionary Mind . Certain questions - What is
the nature of religion? Does society rest on religious foundations?
What ought to be the place of religion in society? - drew sustained
attention from across the political spectrum. Idéologues viewed
religion as error and sought to eradicate it through the promotion
of secular values. Catholic Traditionalists understood religion as
a body of revealed truths of supernatural origin that ought to be
authoritative in all aspects of life. Liberals sought to replace
Christian orthodoxy with a new public faith consonant with liberal
values. But these blocs were not monolithic, and McCalla reveals
the complexities of each one, as well as the dialogues and
rivalries among them. The categories established by the concepts of
religion these thinkers constructed continue to shape debates over
liberationist critiques, liberal pluralism, laïcité , and
political theology. The place of religion in civil society is again
a matter of urgent debate. Religion and the Post-revolutionary
Mind provides essential historical context for thinking about
the status of religion in the contemporary world.
eBook
Peering into the Mosque: Enlightenment Views of Islam
This article examines the Enlightenment's views of Islam as articulated by, among others, Rousseau and Voltaire. The purpose is to provide a different view, not necessarily embracing or criticizing Orientalism, but enlarging the scope of our understanding of the Enlightenment by offering a perspective that accounts for the positive pronouncements proffered by the philosophes toward Islam and Arabic culture. While the discrepancy in the Enlightenment's discourse about the Other attests to the philosophes' struggle to come to terms with Islam, the discrepancy also speaks to a major cultural change that deserves our attention.
Journal Article
