Enlightened nightscapes: critical essays on the long eighteenth-century night

Uittreksel

"This volume brings together eleven case studies that address how the night became visible in the long and global eighteenth century through different mediums and in different geographical contexts. Situated on the eve of the introduction of artificial lighting, the long eighteenth century has much to say about night's darkness and brilliance. The eighteenth century has been bound up epistemologically with images of light, reason, and order. Night and day, light and darkness, reason and mystery, however, are not necessarily at odds in the eighteenth century. In their analysis of narratives, poetry, urban spaces, music, the visual arts, and geological phenomena, the essays provide various frameworks to examine the representation, treatment, and meaning of the enlightened night. The transnational and multidisciplinary nature of the volume presents a survey of the research currently being done in the field of the long eighteenth-century night. This collection contributes to an ongoing exercise that questions the accepted definitions of the Enlightenment, and by bringing Eighteenth-Century Studies into dialogue with Night Studies, it enriches the critical conversation between these lines of research"-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Libertine nocturnes, or the many marvels of the enlightened night / Marine Ganofsky -- Abysms on open view : terrestrial expressions of preternatural darkness and heavenly night / Kevin L. Cope -- "One thousand divine truths" : night, darkness and the sublime in the poetry of Juan Meléndez Valdés / Matthieu P. Raillard -- Shadowed celebration : Goethe's Klassische Walpurgisnacht and creative profusion / Jeffrey Bellomi -- Francisco de Goya's Sleep of reason and other states of somnolence in the Caprichos / Ana Rueda -- The other side of night : enlightened dreaming in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's Beauty and the beast (1740) / Valentine Balguerie -- Fire at bedtime, or the dangers of sleep in France (1700-1830) / Florence Fesneau -- Early to bed : sleep, artificial light, and entertainment in eighteenth-century Istanbul / Avner Wishnitzer -- The uncertainty of evening in seduction narratives of the early republic / Sarah Cullen -- "Like a night without darkness" : music and nightscape in the early piano nocturne (1810-1830) / Katelyn Clark -- The haunted industrialized nightscape : factories, mills, and ironworks at night / Bridget M. Marshall.