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Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) moved between the genres and geographies of enlightenment writing with considerable dexterity. As a consequence he has been characterized as a passive purveyor of enlightenment thought, a hack, a harried translator of the French enlightenment for an English audience, an ideological lackey, and a subtle ironist. In poetry, he is either a compliant pastoralist or an engaged social critic. Yet Goldsmith's career is as complex and as contradictory as the enlightenment currents across which he wrote, and there is in Goldsmith's oeuvre a set of themes-including his opposition to the new imperialism and to glibly declared principles of liberty-which this book addresses as a manifestation of his Irishness.
Michael Griffin places Goldsmith in two contexts: one is the intellectual and political culture in which he worked as a professional author living in London; the other is that of his nationality and his as yet unstudied Jacobite politics. Enlightenment in Ruins thereby reveals a body of work that is compellingly marked by tensions and transits between Irishness and Englishness, between poetic and professional imperatives, and between cultural and scientific spheres.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Goldsmith's career
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part 1: Comparative views of races and nations
1. The cultural climate: natural histories of national character
2. The lie of the land: liberty and travel
Part 2: Political landscapes and bodies politic
3. Delicate allegories: Ireland and the East
4. Geographies of Ruin: Ireland, America and Auburn's absentees
Ill Fares the Land: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Michael Griffin was a writer, editor, political analyst and specialist on the Taliban and Al Qa'ida. He regularly commented on the war in Afghanistan for BBC, Sky and Al Jazeera. As editor he worked for Transparency International, International Alert, Small Arms Survey and ODI. He is the author of Reaping the Whirlwind and Islamic State.
Summary
Crossing disciplinary boundaries between eighteenth-century studies and Irish studies, this book explores the geographies and politics of Oliver Goldsmith’s complex and productive negotiation of the London literary marketplace during the enlightenment.
