Edward Gibbon and Empire

Hardback

Main Details

Title Edward Gibbon and Empire
Authors and Contributors      Edited by Rosamond McKitterick
Edited by Roland Quinault
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:368
Dimensions(mm): Height 229,Width 152
Category/GenreWorld history - BCE to c 500 CE
ISBN/Barcode 9780521497244
ClassificationsDewey:937.06092
Audience
Professional & Vocational

Publishing Details

Publisher Cambridge University Press
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publication Date 13 November 1996
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

This book examines Gibbon's interpretations of empire and the intellectual context in which he formulated them against a background of the eighteenth- and late twentieth-century knowledge of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Gibbon's ideas of empire, his understanding of monarchy and the balance of power, his sources and working methods, the structure of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his attitude towards the barbarians, the contrasting treatments of the eastern and western Empire, his appreciation of past civilizations and their material remains, his audience and their reactions - contemporary and Victorian - are considered in the light of the latest research on eighteenth-century intellectual history on the one hand and on late antiquity, Byzantium and the Middle Ages on the other. The book breaks new ground in taking the form of a dialogue between experts on the fields about which Gibbon himself wrote, and eighteenth-century intellectual historians.

Reviews

'The essays in this handsome volume ... are uniformly learned and polished ...' Early Medieval Europe