Writing and European Thought 1600-1830

by Nicholas Hudson

Overview

Writing and European Thought, 1600-1830 argues for the central importance of writing to conceptions of language, technological progress and Western civilization during the Early Modern Era. Attitudes to the written language changed radically between the late Renaissance and Romanticism, and Nicholas Hudson challenges some central assumptions of modern historical scholarship on the nature of that change. He questions the argument that European thinkers have been "logocentric," and that the rise of print and literacy produced a more visually oriented culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521455404
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/08/1994
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Sacred and occult scripts in the Renaissance tradition; 2. The demystification of writing in the seventeenth century; 3. 'The uniform voice of nature': conjectural history in the early eighteenth century; 4. Conservative reaction: the study of writing after Warburton; 5. Writing and speech: the debate in Britain; 6. Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues and its context; 7. The new mediation: perceptions of writing in the Romantic era; Conclusions: a continuing legacy of debate; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Drawing on a wide variety of sources and spreading across several disciplines--literary, philosophic, and liguistic history--this is a solid and original study, quite unlike other histories of linguistics, rhetoric, and style in its singular focus on writing, and the period's gradual separation of writing and speech as separate functions of language." SEL

"...this is an admirable book. ...students of literature, philosophy, and linguistics will find this detailed and trustworthy connected history immensly useful. Graduate students; researchers." Choice

"Hudson's well-researched and well-argued book is very much worth reading." Patrick hutton, Canadian Journal of History

From the Publisher