Cambridge Scholars Publishing Politics and Culture in 18th-Century Anglo-Italian Encounters: Entangled Histories

This collection addresses Anglo-Italian influences, correspondences and relationships through the lens of an expansive notion of eighteenth-century political history, explored in its fecund dialogue with cultural history. Its multifaceted approach fleshes out the idea of the Enlightenment community of people linking and sharing different forms and structures of knowledge into a comprehensive picture of the Age of Reason. This book probes fields of great relevance for the cultural interpretation of historical experience, and composes a lively, and as yet unexplored, map of an interconnected European world. Anglo-Italian encounters are explored here primarily through the interweaving of political and cultural history, adding a valuable cog to contemporary insight into the cosmopolitan nature of Enlightenment Europe. The essays here range in scope from the public economy and international trade to finance, moral philosophy, the ethics and politics of translation, travel, the cosmopolitan impact of Italian music and taste, and the art of gardening. About the Author Lidia De Michelis is Professor of English and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Milan, Italy. Her works on eighteenth-century literature focus on Defoe, women’s writing and Anglo-Italian cultural relationships. She has published widely on contemporary British culture and fiction, political discourse and postcolonial issues, especially regarding South Africa, Black Britain, and immigration. Lia Guerra is Professor of English Literature at the University of Pavia, Italy. She has published extensively on eighteenth-century British literature in prose, on travel literature, and has devoted a large part of her research to Mary Shelley and James Joyce. Frank O’Gorman is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester, UK. He has published widely on the period of the long eighteenth century, with particular reference to political parties, political philosophy, parliamentary elections and electoral ritual. He recently published an expanded version of The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History.