Casanova and Enlightenment (ePub)
His Study of Life and Other Writers
Imprint: Pen & Sword History
File Size: 28.0 MB (.epub)
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781399055857
Published: 16th October 2024
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Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born the son of a moderately poor acting family at a time when the stage carried enormous social stigma. Yet in his own lifetime he achieved celebrity across Europe, rubbing shoulders with numerous of the eighteenth century’s greatest men and women, from Frederick the Great to Catherine the Great, from Voltaire to Albrecht von Haller, from Pope Benedict XIV to Pope Clement XIII. It was a fame that had little to do with his romantic exploits. This was to come later, following upon the posthumous publication of his magnificent History of My Life. An adventurer and a man of learning, his was an extraordinary career whose story was intertwined with the story of eighteenth-century Europe.
Casanova’s Life and Times, the first book of this two-volume project, concentrates on what it was like to live in the eighteenth century. This second book, Casanova & Enlightenment, now turns to Casanova’s intellectual development within the context of the Enlightenment, proposing a re-evaluation of his status as a philosopher.
"The bibliography on Casanova is wide and boundless, but rarely can there be found such clear and illuminating work on him as David Thompson’s two-volume project Casanova’s Life & Times and Casanova & Enlightenment. Anyone who is seeking a general survey of the eighteenth century and on Casanova himself will find these books to be accessible, comprehensive and original. Thompson’s work can legitimately stand amongst the indispensable modern texts on Casanova."
Gianluca Simeoni, Casanovan scholar, and member of the editorial board of the academic journal Casanoviana
About David John Thompson
DAVE THOMPSON is a retired teacher, a history writer and blogger with a degree and masters in History. He has long been intrigued by the controversial life of the adventurer and man of letters Giacomo Casanova and the continuing difficulty successive generations of scholars have found in getting to grips with him. Everyone who encounters him, specialist and non-specialist, is faced with the challenge of historical and moral complexity. The hope is that this two-volume project will provide not so much clear-cut answers to that challenge but a helpful framework within which to consider it.