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1 results

  • Chapter 8 - The Enlightenment

  • from Part II - Pan-European Moods and Movements
  • Edited by Petra Rau, University of East Anglia, William T. Rossiter, University of East Anglia
  • Book:
    Europe in British Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    06 June 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024, pp 133-148

  • Summary

    In the eyes of other nations, Britain was a colonial, maritime, and mercantile country, whose still strong interests in Europe were expressed largely culturally. This perception made the Enlightenment a broadly recognizable movement, carried on over national boundaries and concerned with ideas such as ‘the modern’, of religious toleration, of progress, of the ‘science of man’ so strongly supported by David Hume, and of human (or rather, white and masculine) dignity. It self-consciously located itself geographically in Europe and chronologically in ‘the modern age’, which, after much debate in the early part of the century, it saw as superior to that of the Greeks and Romans, in spite of their immense cultural legacy, which was shared by all Europeans. Yet in the end, this chapter argues, in spite of a shared ancient legacy, Britain remained pulled in two directions, the colonial and imperial on the one hand, and the European on the other.