The Making of the Humanities : Volume II: From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines

While it is clear that around 1800 the humanities as a discipline rose to prominence, it is less clear what the exact nature of this shift in academia was. Was it a sudden revolution caused by a momentary but powerful change in the zeitgeist or the turning point of a much longer process? In this volume, the editors have selected a series of essays that look at the origins of the humanities and find that long before 1800 the concept of the humanities was already at the fore. The shift around 1800 was thus mostly institutional, not theoretical. The Making of the Humanities traces this new finding through a broad range of disciplines including literary theory, linguistics, art history, and musicology.** [C:\Users\Microsoft\Documents\Calibre Library] This much-awaited second volume investigates the changes in subject, method and institutional context of the humanistic disciplines around 1800, offering a wealth of insights for specialists and students alike. Point of departure is the pivotal question whether there was a paradigm shift in the humanities around 1800 or whether these changes were part of a much longer process. The authors provide an overarching perspective including philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, historiography, philosophy and literary theory. They also make clear that the influence from the East, from the Ottoman Empire to China, was crucial for the development of the European humanistic disciplines. This first volume in 'The making of the humanities' series focuses on the early modern period. Specialists from various disciplines offer their view on the history of linguistics, literary studies, musicology, historiography, and philosophy.