Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment

Download or read book Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment written by Richard J. Jones and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) is best known today as a novelist, but in the eighteenth-century, he was regarded as a historian and critic. In this book, Richard J. Jones explores the diversity of Smollett's journalistic and literary writings and establishes new connections between Smollett's work and writers of the Scottish Enlightenment. The book takes as its focal point Smollett's visit to Nice, between 1763 and 1765, and the account he wrote of it in Travels through France and Italy (1766). This account is usually seen as a "travel narrative" but Jones argues that it should be read as a "pocket encyclopedia" in the tradition of Voltaire. Jones divides his study into sections on medicine, fine art, the theater and history. In doing so, he offers a productive juxtaposition of authors, texts and contexts, presenting Smollett as a writer whose Scottish (and particularly Glaswegian) identity informed his involvement in a wider European Enlightenment.