Colin Kidd: 'Words and Things'

England was an outlier in the age of Enlightenment. It saw neither the emergence of an adversarial intelligentsia nor the rise of a new science of society. If there was an English Enlightenment, it was understated, unobtrusive and of a peculiarly conservative cast. These lectures approach the topic by way of eighteenth-century England’s acknowledged fascination with classical antiquity, focussing in particular on critical philology, pagan philosophical schools and ancient genres.

Lecture 6: Words and Things

This lecture explores the place of linguistic and scientific scholarship in the eighteenth-century English reception of the classics, with a particular focus on the era of the French Revolution. In addition, the series will conclude with an attempt to situate England relative to the recent classical turn in Enlightenment historiography.   

See lecture on History Faculty Website.