Rutgers University Press Hemispheres and Stratospheres: The Idea and Experience of Distance in the International Enlightenment (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

Nowhere is distance so near-at-hand as in Enlightenment culture. Whether in the telescopic surveys of early astronomers, the panoramas of painters, the diaries of travelers, the prospects of landscape architects, or the tales of novelists, distance is never far in the background of the works and deeds of long-eighteenth-century artists, authors, and adventurers. Hemispheres and Stratospheres draws that background into the foreground. Recognizing distance as a central concern of the Enlightenment, this volume offers eight essays on distance in art and literature; on cultural transmission and exchange over distance; and on distance as a topic in science, a theme in literature, and a central issue in modern research methods. Through studies of landscape gardens, architecture, imaginary voyages, transcontinental philosophical exchange, and cosmological poetry, Hemispheres and Stratospheres unfurls the early history of a distance culture that influences our own era of global information exchange, long-haul flights, colossal skyscrapers, and space tourism. Review "In eight wide-ranging essays by prominent scholars, this groundbreaking collection challenges how Enlightenment and long-eighteenth-century researchers need to reassess the interdisciplinary nature, cultural richness, and international scope of this topic. The study ventures into new territories in the international and cultural terrain of distance studies, uncovering uncharted research and future prospects in the digital humanities."--Mark Pedreira "Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras""With his characteristic intellectual amplitude, Kevin L. Cope presents in this volume essays on the eighteenth-century 'prospect' in art and literature, the function of distance in Italian architecture, the European travel of two South Indian priests, the dislocations and adaptations of 'long distance' imaginary voyages, and the possible advantages of 'distant' reading--among others. While novel in its core supposition, the volume pays respect to an older, distinguished scholarly orientation that is perfectly in line with our own multidisciplinary moment: the history of ideas."--John Scanlan "coeditor of The Age of Johnson" About the Author Kevin L. Cope is Adams Professor of English Literature and a member of the comparative literature faculty at Louisiana State University.The author of Criteria of Certainty (1990), of John Locke Revisited (1999), and of In and After the Beginning (2007), Cope has written scholarly essays on topics ranging from the early-modern fascination with miracles to colossalism in modern culture. He edits the annual journal1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era and served for over a decade as the general editor of ECCB:The Eighteenth-Century Current Bibliography. He has edited several volumes of essays, including Textual Studies and the Enlarged Eighteenth Century: Precision as Profusion (2012)and Citizens of the World: Adapting in the Eighteenth Century (2015). A former member of the National Governing Council of the American Society for University Professors, Cope is regularly referenced in publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed and is a frequent guest on radio and television news and talk shows.