Debating Enlightenment: Scholarship, Historiography and the Transmission of Books and Ideas

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Dr Marco Barducci (University of Pavia, Italy) Dr Shaun Blanchard

Debating Enlightenment

Scholarship, Historiography and the Transmission of Books and Ideas

Dr Marco Barducci (University of Pavia, Italy), Dr Shaun Blanchard, Jeffrey D Burson , Alasdair Raffe

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Boydell & Brewer
25 November 2025

European history; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Western philosophy: Enlightenment

Series: Ideas and Practices, 1300–1850

A bold reappraisal of Enlightenment legacies this volume uncovers the fractured, global, and contested nature of modern Europe's most influential intellectual transformation.

Emerging

from the intellectual upheavals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

the Enlightenment has long served as both a foundational moment and a

battleground for narratives of Western modernity. Once anchored in the

writings of Spinoza, Kant, Diderot, and D'Alembert, its genealogy is now

understood to stretch from the rhetorical afterlives of Renaissance humanism

and the polemics of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, through

the religious pluralism of the Dutch Republic and the confessional fractures

of the Holy Roman Empire, to the text-critical methods of orthodox

theologians and the radical secularism of the philosophes.

This

volume rethinks the Enlightenment as a dynamic espace de débat-a field

of contested meanings shaped by transnational circulation, institutional

conflict, and historiographical reinvention. Drawing on debates around the ""Enlightenment

project"", ""radical"" and ""religious"" Enlightenment, and the tensions between

cosmopolitan ideals and national traditions, it engages with the works of

Jonathan Israel, Dan Edelstein, and Jeffrey Burson, amongst others, to

explore longue durée patterns of intellectual exchange and

secularisation.

Rich in case studies from Paris, London, Amsterdam, Leipzig, and beyond, the collection speaks directly to those navigating the plural legacies of Enlightenment historiography in an era increasingly shaped by digital tools, global frameworks, and postcolonial critique.

Contributions by: Dr Shaun Blanchard, Jeffrey D Burson, Alasdair Raffe, Dr Thomas Wallnig
Edited by: Dr Marco Barducci (University of Pavia Italy)
Imprint: Boydell & Brewer
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781914967238
ISBN 10: 1914967232
Series: Ideas and Practices, 1300–1850
Pages: 244
Publication Date: 25 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

MARCO BARDUCCI is Associate Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Pavia. He has published widely on political and intellectual history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. ASHLEY WALSH is Lecturer in Early Modern History at Cardiff University. MARCO BARDUCCI is Associate Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Pavia. He has published widely on political and intellectual history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.