...Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737Gibbon's birthday is April 27, 1737 of the old style (O.S.) Julian calendar; England adopted the new style (N.S.) Gregorian calendar in 1752, and thereafter Gibbon's birthday was celebrated on May 8, 1737, N.S. January 16, 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known principally for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open denigration of organised religion, though the extent of this is disputed by some critics.The most recent and also the first critical edition, in three volumes, is that of David Womersley. For commentary on Gibbon's irony and insistence on primary sources whenever available, see Womersley, "Introduction". While the larger part of Gibbon's caustic view of Christianity is declared within the text of chapters XV and XVI, Gibbon rarely neglects to note its baleful influence throughout the remaining volumes of the Decline and Fall. Read full entry
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- 1.Edward Gibbon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Portrait, oil on canvas, of Edward Emily Gibbon (1737–1794) by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) ... Edward Gibbon, by Henry Walton (died 1813) ...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E
dward_Gibbon
- 2.Books and Writers: Edward Gibbon
- Profile of the Enlightenment-era English historian and scholar whose monumental work on the Roman Empire is often considered the greatest historical work written ...
- http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/egi
bbon.htm
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i need an online source on I need online sources that
explain Edward Gibbon's belief
of why the Roman Empire fell.
It can't be wikipedia or any
type of encyclopedia. and
something that states it
easily. please!!!thanks!
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I don't see how you can beat Gibbon himself. No, I'm not expecting you to condense his massive work into an essay, but you might look at his autobiography, which can be downloaded from Gutenberg, and is–for a writer of that period–quite readable. I think if you will browse these memoirs you will find plenty of useful quotes, and your instructor will be amazed and pleased that you have gone to the source for your information. Skip freely!! Here's an extract: "My first introduction to the historic scenes, which have since engaged so many years of my life, must be ascribed to an accident. In the summer of 1751, I accompanied my father on a visit to Mr. Hoare's, in Wiltshire; but I was less delighted with the beauties of Stourhead, than with discovering in the library a common book, the Continuation of Echard's Roman History, which is indeed executed with more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my intellectual feast. This transient glance served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity; and as soon as I returned to Bath I procured the second and third volumes of Howel's History of the World, which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention; and some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley, an original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led from one book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental history. Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks; and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot, and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, or to act; and the only principle that darted a ray of light into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application to the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher and Prideaux, distinguished the connection of events, and engraved the multitude of names and dates in a clear and indelible series. But in the discussion of the first ages I overleaped the bounds of modesty and use. In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation. I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition, that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance, of which a school-boy would have been ashamed." |
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What is value of a 6-volume Signed/dated 1909 by Oliver
Wilbur.Edition Deluxe.Set is
#173- Limited to One Thousand
Sets Printed for
SubscribersOnly.The Nottingham
Society. First pg says 'This
edition of the
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Go to www.abebooks.com and put in this information -- you'll find out what price other people who have this edition are charging. |
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Is there a compendium of I was told by a literate
friend that in every library
you should be able to find a
big thick volume of
commentaries concerning Edward
Gibbon's "The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire", but I am not sure
what the title is or even how
recent the scholarship is
either. Would it perhaps be
the "Bicentenary Essays"
edited by Womersly?
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Here is an agglutination of the sources that scrutinized Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Gibbon's use of irony to undercut the claims of Christianity, and his presentation of a compendium of arguments against Christianity in chapter fifteen of his history, see D. Wootton, "Narrative, Irony, and Faith in Gibbon's Decline and Fall,"in D. Womersley,J. Burrow and J. Pocock (eds.), Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays, (Oxford,1997), pp. 203-34 (Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 355 [19971). As Wootton points out (p. 217), Gibbon himself had no difficulty using the word irony of his account in chapter fifteen. Gibbon later acknowledged that he "learned to manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of Ecclesiastical solemnity," from Pascal's Lettres provinciales [Gibbon (ed. J. Murray) The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, (London, 1896), p. 143]. See also S.P. Foster, Melancholy Duty: The Hume-Gibbon Attack on Christianity (Dordrecht, 1997). As this paper is intended to treat an aspect of the reading history of The Decline and Fall; however, I do not directly engage myself in the debate over Gibbon's precise position on belief. 'D. Hume to Gibbon, 18 March 1776, in G.A. Bonnard (ed.), Edward Gibbon: Memoirs of my Life (London, 1966), p. 168. ribbon to Dorothea Gibbon, 26 March 1776, in J.E. Norton (ed.), The Letters of Edward Gibbon (New York, 1956), II, 100. f Urbanus Sylvanus, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Gentleman's Magazine, 46 (1776), 365-67. 6'bid., p. 365. 'Ibid., p. 366. 8Ibid. 1J. Chelsum, Remarks on the Two Last Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History (London, 1776). '5R. Watson, An Apolog for Christianity in a Series of Letters to Edward Gibbon (Cambridge, 1776). "Watson's Apology proved to be the most popular of the replies to Gibbon, going through several editions (Dictionary of National Biography, hereafter DNB). "On the clerical response, see M. C. Noonkester, "Gibbon and the Clergy: Private Virtues, Public Vices," Harvard Theological Review, 83 (1990), 399-414 and N. Aston, "A `disorderly squadron'? A Fresh Look at Clerical Responses to The Decline and Fall," Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays, pp. 253-77. Bibliographies of these controversial replies are found in S.T. McCloy, Gibbon's Antagonism to Christianity (Chapel Hill, 1933), pp. 371-77; H.M. Beatty, "Bibliography," in Gibbon (ed. J.B. Bury), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 7 vols., 3rd ed. (London, 1909-14; AMS reprint 1974), VII, 361-64 (hereafter DF), and P.B. Craddock's Edward Gibbon: A Reference Guide (Boston, 1987). Gibbon later commented: "Had I believed that the majority of English readers were so fondly attached even to the name and shadow of Christianity; had I foreseen that the pious, the timid and the prudent would feel or affect to feel with such exquisite sensibility; I might, perhaps have softened the two invidious Chapters, which would create many enemies, and conciliate few friends" (Gibbon, Memoirs, p. 159). |
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