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Libertinage
A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society. Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade. History of the term The word ''libertine'' was originally coined by John Calvin to negatively describe opponents of his policies in Geneva, Switzerland. This group, led by Ami Perrin, argued against Calvin's "insistence that church discipline should be enforced uniformly against all members of Genevan society". Perrin and his allies were e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl Of Rochester
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as for his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died as a result of venereal disease at the age of 33. Rochester was described by his contemporary Andrew Marvell as "the best English satirist," and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits. His poetry was widely censored during the Victorian era, but enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with reappraisals from noted literary figures such as Graham Greene and Ezra Pound. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism. During his lifetime, Rochester was best known for ''A Satyr Against Reason and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (also Rutherfurd or Rutherfoord; – 29 March 1661) was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian who wrote widely read letters, sermons, devotional and scholastic works. As a political theorist, he is known for "Lex, Rex: the Law and the Prince," a defense of constitutionalism and limited government against the supposed divine right of kings, and other works advocating separation of church and state and a divine right of presbyters (elders). He was one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. Life Samuel Rutherford was born in the parish of Nisbet (now part of Crailing), Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, about 1600. Nothing certain is known as to his parentage, but he belonged to the same line as the Roxburghs of Hunthill (from whom Sir Walter Scott was descended) and his father is believed to have been a farmer or miller. A brother was school-master of Kirkcudbright, and was a Bible Reader there, and another brother was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like ''liberté, égalité, fraternité'' reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution, and inspired campaigns for the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. The values and institutions it created dominate French politics to this day. Its causes are generally agreed to be a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the ''Ancien Régime'' proved unable to manage. In May 1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. Continuing unrest culminated in the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July, which led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
18th Century In Literature
Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the years 1700–1799. European literature in the 18th century European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire, and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 ''Robinson Crusoe'' is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel. 18th century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism. The Enlightenment The 18th century in Europe was the Age of Enlightenment, and literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libertine Novel
The libertine novel was an 18th-century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition. The genre effectively ended with the French Revolution. Themes of libertine novels were anti-clericalism, anti-establishment and eroticism. Authors include Cyrano de Bergerac ('' L’Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune'', 1657), Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon ('' Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit'', 1736; ''Le Sopha, conte moral'', 1742), Denis Diderot (''Les bijoux indiscrets'', 1748), Marquis de Sade (''L'Histoire de Juliette'', 1797–1801), Choderlos de Laclos ('' Les Liaisons dangereuses'', 1782). Other famous titles are '' Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier des Chartreux'' (1741) and ''Thérèse Philosophe'' (1748). Precursors to the libertine writers were Théophile de Viau (1590-1626) and Charles de Saint-Evremond (1610-1703), who were inspired by Epicurus and the publication of Petronius Gaius Petroniu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epicurus
Epicurus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκουρος ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to ''Menoeceus'', ''Pythocles'', and ''Herodotus''—and two collections of quotes—the ''Principal Doctrines'' and the ''Vatican Sayings''—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into English as ''On the Nature of Things''—and somewhat less often as ''On the Nature of the Universe''. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the three-age system that was formalised in 1836 by C. J. Thomsen. Very little is known about Lucretius's life; the only certainty is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, to whom the poem was addressed and dedicated. ''De rerum natura'' was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his ''Aeneid'' and ''Georgics'', and to a lesser extent on the ''Eclogues'') and Horace. The work was almost lost during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany by Poggio Bracciolini and it played an important role both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne ( ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers; his massive volume ''Essais'' contains some of the most influential essays ever written. During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the ''Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late first and early second centuries CE fix his earliest date of composition. One recent scholar argues that his first book was published in 100 or 101. A reference to a political figure dates his fifth and final surviving book to sometime after 127. Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in the verse form dactylic hexameter. These poems cover a range of Roman topics. This follows Lucilius—the originator of the Roman satire genre, and it fits within a poetic tradition that also includes Horace and Persius. The ''Satires'' are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a number of perspectives, although their comic mode of expression makes it problematic to acc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (; 1 November 1636 – 13 March 1711), often known simply as Boileau (, ), was a French poet and critic. He did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, in the same way that Blaise Pascal did to reform the prose. He was greatly influenced by Horace. Family and education Boileau was the fifteenth child of Gilles Boileau, a clerk in the Parliament of Paris. Two of his brothers attained some distinction: Gilles Boileau, the author of a translation of Epictetus; and Jacques Boileau, who became a canon of the Sainte-Chapelle, and made valuable contributions to church history. The surname " Despréaux" was derived from a small property at Crosne near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. His mother died when he was two years old; and Nicolas Boileau, who had a delicate constitution, seems to have suffered something from want of care. Sainte-Beuve puts down his somewhat hard and unsympathetic outlook quite as much to the uninspiring circumstances of these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Review Of English Studies
''The Review of English Studies'' is an academic journal published by Oxford University Press covering English literature and the English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ... from the earliest period to the present. ''RES'' is a "leading scholarly journal of English literature and the English language" whose critical " phasis is on historical scholarship rather than interpretative criticism, though fresh readings of authors and texts are also offered in light of newly discovered sources or new interpretation of known material." References {{DEFAULTSORT:Review of English Studies, The Literary magazines published in the United Kingdom English-language journals Publications established in 1925 Oxford University Press academic journals 5 times per year jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'', 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 2nd edition, 1986. 3rd edition, Routledge, London, 1996. p. 286 More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".Bourke, Vernon J., "Rationalism," p. 263 in Runes (1962). In an oldJohn Locke (1690), An Essay on Human Understanding controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
