The Age of Projects: 09 (UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series) - Hardcover

Book 2 of 20: UCLA Clark Memorial Library

Maximillian E. Novak

 
9780802098733: The Age of Projects: 09 (UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0802098738 ISBN 13: 9780802098733
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2008

Synopsis

"The Projecting Age" was a term the English novelist Daniel Defoe used to describe the end of the seventeenth century. This term could just as easily be used, however, to describe the period known as the "Long Eighteenth Century" (1660-1789). The Age of Projects uses the notion of a project as a key to understanding the massive social, cultural, political, literary, and scientific transitions that occurred in Europe during this time.

The contributors to this collection examine fraudulent, grandiose, altruistic, and idealistic projects that reveal the period's radical breaks from the past and its preoccupation with the future. Examining topics as diverse as Jonathan Swift's satire on the possibility of a computer, to Gottfried Leibniz's effort to build one, and Edmund Burke's prediction that the project of democratic governance would be taken over by greedy adventurers, this volume provides significant insight into the period's ambitions for an improved future.

A well-balanced collection by leading scholars from diverse disciplines, The Age of Projects is a significant contribution to intellectual history, literary history, and the history of science.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Maximillian E. Novak is a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Publication date
2008
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0802098738
ISBN 13 
9780802098733
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
368