Cultural transmission and the French Enlightenment – Repurposing the past : Repurposing the past

Emphasizing the entangled nature of eighteenth-century thought and its reception, these essays ask where the past ends and its interpretation begins. By illuminating the myriad material forms of knowledge and their circulation, the authors define the Enlightenment as a process of invention, repurposing, and reception.

Many French Enlightenment thinkers sculpted their identity and projected their ideas into the future via reflection on the past, despite their rhetoric of rupture and rejection of tradition. Emphasizing the entangled nature of eighteenth-century thought and its reception, Cultural transmission and the French Enlightenment: repurposing the past asks where the past ends and its interpretation begins, illuminating the myriad material forms of knowledge and their circulation across geographical space and time. The contributing authors uncover and interrogate the cultural assumptions of both the French Enlightenment and its afterlife. Each essay examines this process of cultural transmission and the ramifications today of the continued sourcing of ideas generated during the Enlightenment. Bringing together perspectives ranging from literary studies, to history of science and theater studies, the authors of this volume interpret the Enlightenment through its continuity rather than as a set of fixed, universal values. Instead of accepting or contesting Western society and politics as the apogee of progress, and seeking an intellectual past by which to define the present, such approaches situate the Enlightenment in a longer chain of invention, repurposing, and reception.