The Scottish Enlightenment and the matter of Troy
Abstract
The modern world knows the Scottish Enlightenment as the nursery of today’s social sciences, when the outlines of economics, sociology and anthropology first became apparent in the works of Adam Smith and his contemporaries. However, deeper immersion in 18th-century Scottish culture reveals the enduring importance of classical antiquity to intellectuals who were as much late humanists as pioneer social scientists. Indeed, the unexpected fascination of enlightened Scots with the Trojan War and the ancient post-savage society described by Homer opens up new perspectives on Scottish Enlightenment sociology as an offshoot of classical erudition. Moreover, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the institutional embodiment of the Scottish Enlightenment, played a dominant part in the late-18th- and early-19th-century debate about the location of Troy.
Citation
Kidd , C C 2018 , ' The Scottish Enlightenment and the matter of Troy ' , Journal of the British Academy , vol. 6 , pp. 97-130 . https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/006.097
Publication
Journal of the British Academy
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2052-7217Type
Journal article
Rights
© The British Academy 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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