Compte rendu publié dans Acta fabula (décembre 2022, vol. 23, n° 10): "L’historiographie comme une méthode : Paul Rapin Thoyras & l’histoire au XVIIIe siècle" par Fiona McIntosh-Varjabédian
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New from Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment:
Paul Rapin Thoyras and the art of eighteenth-century historiography
By Miriam Franchina
This is the first book on the genesis, impact and reception of the most-widely read History of England of the early 18th century and its complementary works: Paul Rapin Thoyras’ Histoire d’Angleterre 1724-27. It reconstructs how scholars pursued trustworthy knowledge amidst the shifting boundaries of the Republic of Letters; and shows that empirical history-writing, committed to erudition in the service of impartiality, coexisted with the histoire philosophique.
- An inquiry into history-writing in the Republic of Letters with a foray in the Enlightenment, from Le Clerc’s pyrrhonism to Hume’s and Voltaire’s philosophical histories
- A reconstruction of how networking, friendship and editorial disputes worked in the “imagined community” of the Republic of Letters
- The first book on the most-widely read History of England before Hume’s
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“Rapin’s achievements were extraordinary, yet his strategies and ambitions were common within the Republic of Letters – as were his previous occupations as soldier and tutor, and his multiple displacements: to England, the Netherlands, and ultimately Germany. His personal trajectory thus illuminates how scholars reconsidered the boundaries of their community in the face of the booming printing industry and the interconnected growth of a readership among the general public.”
(Read the author’s accompanying blog post)
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Table of Contents:
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. History-writing in the Republic of Letters
2. Paul Rapin Thoyras and his Histoire project
3. Impartiality in the making in the Histoire d’Angleterre
4. Rapin’s oeuvre in the Republic of Letters and beyond
5. History-writing and Enlightenment
Bibliography
Index
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Dr. Miriam Franchina received her Ph.D. from the University of Halle, Germany in 2017. She is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Trier for the project “Religion, Slavery and Race in the Age of Revolutions: Catholicism from Colonial Saint-Domingue to Independent Haiti” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.