Edward Gibbon and the Shape of History

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-19-870483-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press(UK)

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 387 g

Edward Gibbon's presentation of character in both the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and in his posthumously published Memoirs demonstrates a prevailing interest in the values of transcendent heroism and individual liberty, but also an insistent awareness of the dangers these values pose to coherence and narrative order. In this study, Charlotte Roberts demonstrates how these dynamics also inform the 'character' of the Decline and Fall: in which ironic difference confronts enervating uniformity; oddity counters specious lucidity; and revision combats repetition.

Edward Gibbon and the Shape of History explores the Decline and Fall as a work of scholarship and of literature, tracing both its expansive outline and its expressive details. A close examination of each of the three instalments of Gibbon's history reveals an intimate relationship between the style of Gibbon's narrative and the overall shape of his historiographical composition. The constant interplay between style and substance, or between the particular details of composition and the larger patterns of argument and narrative, informs every aspect of Gibbon's work: from his reception of established and innovative historiographical conventions to the expression of his narrative voice. Through a combination of close reading and larger literary and scholarly analysis, Charlotte Roberts conveys a sense of the Decline and Fall as a work more complex and conflicted, in its tone and structure, than has been appreciated by previous scholars, without losing sight of the grand contours of Gibbon's superlative achievement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roberts, Charlotte

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: Shaping Edward Gibbon

- 1: Gibbon's Characters: Identity and Personhood in the Decline and Fall

- 2: 'On that celebrated ground': Equivalency in the First Volume of the Decline and Fall

- 3: 'To unite the most distant revolutions': Inheritance in the Second and Third Volumes of the Decline and Fall

- 4: 'A solemn and mournful recollection': Repetition in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Volumes of the Decline and Fall

- 5: The Marmoreal Edward Gibbon: The Memoirs and the Ruins of Rome

- 6: Conclusion: Edward Gibbon and the Shape of History

Über Autor(innen)

Charlotte Roberts was born and brought up in Oxford, and studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities before completing her doctorate at Cambridge 2012. After spending two years as a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, she took up the post of Lecturer in English (1700-1830) at University College London in 2013.