Persia and the Enlightenment
Edited by Cyrus Masroori, Whitney Mannies, and John Christian Laursen
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2020:10
Persia is frequently mentioned in various discourses of the Enlightenment including theology, literature, and political theory. What was the appeal of Persia to such a diverse intellectual population in Enlightenment Europe? In what ways did utilizing Persia contribute to the development of modern European identities? In this volume, an international group of scholars with diverse academic backgrounds has tackled these and other questions related to the Enlightenment’s engagement with Persia.
- A comprehensive study of why and how Persia was utilized by early modern European intellectuals.
- Throws new light on the complexity of intercultural engagements and their impact on collective identities.
- An excellent book for graduate courses studying the Enlightenment and cultural encounters.
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"There is an almost unlimited potential for further work in the area of influences from Persia in the Enlightenment, an area that is explored in our very recent volume in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, Persia and the Enlightenment (2021). Each chapter can be considered a pointer in the direction of further research. For example, my chapter, “George Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian”, reviews a number of English texts purporting to be written by “a Persian Traveler”. These texts started appearing in response to George Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England, to his friend at Ispahan (1735), and are best understood in the context of an intense political fight between Prime Minister Robert Walpole and his opposition."
(Read the author’s accompanying blog post)
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Cyrus Masroori is a professor of political theory at California State University San Marcos. His research interests include history of Persian political thought, utopian discourses, toleration, and Rumi’s thought.
Whitney Mannies teaches political theory at Cal Poly Pomona. Her current research focuses on the history of feminist thought in eighteenth-century France, Britain, and the United States. She is working on a monograph exploring the debate about women’s rights that was provoked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert.
John Christian Laursen is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.