| Discussion topics | Documents | Reading | Audio |

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Discussion topics

• What is meant by 'the early enlightenment'?
• What was the single most significant change in European politics or society in this period?
• How 'modern' was early modern Europe?
• How did perceptions of 'Europe' and European identities change in the early enlightenment?

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Documents

**NOTE: Some eresources are accessible only on-campus or via off-campus proxies or the Athens service**

Texts	[Interpret]	Images	[Interpret]
Salon life, extracts illustrating a much-debated 'new' feature of European culture Account of the First English Coffee-Houses (c.1670-1675) C.-L. de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. M. Mauldon, with an introduction and notes by A. Kahn (1721/2008). John Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1763) (excerpts) C. Seth and R. von Kulessa (eds), The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives (2017)		Map of Europe in 1700 Art des Gonzales Cocques, Dancing Party View from the Gardens of Sanssouci Palace at Potsdam (c. 1750) Largillière, The Artist and His Family (c.1710)

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Audio

'The News Revolution and the 18th Century Public Sphere': podcast discussion of David Cayley with David Randall and Brian Cowan ('The Origins of the Modern Public', part 12)

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Secondary literature

Selected Key Texts

• D. Blanks, 'Europeans before Europe: Modernity and the Myth of the Other', in F. Kläger and G. Bayer, eds, Early Modern Constructions of Europe (2016)
• R. Bonney, ‘Conclusion’, in his European Dynastic States (1991) (digital scan)
• J.H. Elliott, ‘Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present, 42 (1969)
• M. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment ?" ("Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ?"), in P. Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York, 1984), pp. 32-50.
• J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (2001) (ebook)
  
• ", Enlightenment Contested: philosophy, modernity and the emancipation of man 1670-1752 (2006)(ebook), esp. Part 1
  
• D. Nicholas, The Transformation of Europe 1300-1600 (1999)
• R. Starn, ‘The Early Modern Muddle’, Journal of Early Modern History, 6: 3 (2002)
• J. Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (2001) (ebook)
  

Further Reading

• J.A. Downie, 'How useful to eighteenth-century English studies is the paradigm of the "bourgeois public sphere"?' Literature Compass 1 (2004)
• J.A. Goldstone, Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world (1991) (ebook)
• P.S. Gorski, ‘Historicizing the secularisation debate: Church, state and society in late medieval and early modern Europe’, American Sociological Review 65 (2000)
• J. Henry, ‘Conclusion’, in his The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (1997) (ebook)
• D. Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (1997)
• B. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration (2007) (ebook)
  
• H.G. Koenigsberger, ‘The crisis of the seventeenth century: a farewell?’, in his Politicians and Virtuosis: Essays in Early Modern History (1988)
• “ , ‘Before the Revolution’, in his Early Modern Europe 1500-1789 (1987)
• P. Lake and S. Pincus, 'Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,' Journal of British Studies 45 (2006)
• P. Musgrave, ‘Conclusion’, in his The early modern European economy (1999) (ebook)
• R. Porter & M. Teich (eds), Revolution in History (1986) (ebook)
• H. Scott, ‘Europe turns East: Political Developments’, in E. Cameron (ed.), Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (1999)

The Enlightenment

• O. Davies & W. de Blécourt, Beyond the witch trials : witchcraft and magic in Enlightenment Europe (2004) (ebook)
  
• V. Ferrone, The intellectual roots of the Italian Enlightenment : Newtonian science, religion, and politics in the early eighteenth century (1995)
• O. Grell and A. Wear, Medicine and religion in Enlightenment Europe (2007)
• M. Fitzpatrick et al, The Enlightenment World (2004) (ebook)
  
• P. Hazard, The European Mind 1680-1715 (1973)
• M. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and republicans (1981)
• J. Marshall, John Locke, toleration, and early Enlightenment culture : religious intolerance and arguments for religious toleration in early modern and "early Enlightenment" Europe (2006)
• D. Outram, The Enlightenment (1995)
• R. Porter, Enlightenment. Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000).
• “ The Enlightenment (2001 edn)
• J. Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760 (2005) (ebook)
• J. Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England (2006)

• P.H. Wilson (ed.), A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe (2008) (ebook)

The Early Enlightenment and the Wider World

• U. Haskins Gonthier, Montesquieu and England: Enlightened Exchanges, 1689–1755 (2015)
• G. Lloyd, Enlightenment Shadows (2013). Especially the chapter 'Cosmopolitan Imagining: Montesquieu’s Persian Letters'.
• Voltaire, Zadig and L'Ingénu, trans. J. Butt (1964/2006)

Module Forum

Module Homepage

E-Resources

Chronology

External Links

•  Eighteenth-century Chronology - database of key events between 1660 and 1800
  

• Eighteenth-century resources - collection of databases relating to 18thC Europe compiled by J. Lynch (includes, chronology of 18thC and overview of
  
• European Enlightenment - extensive overview of 17th- and 18th-century. Englightenment Europe
• La Couturiere Parisienne - website examining f'Fashion Through the Ages'