1. Edward Gibbon: Historian in Space

Abstract

With the geographical expansiveness in mind, this chapter explores the idea of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and its author in relation to space. Gibbon was a modest traveler, and much more an armchair traveler, perhaps even when he might have done otherwise. Gibbon makes great use of physical geography, even as he extrapolates from it to engage with other dimensions that were becoming increasingly significant in the modern world: new political, social and domestic spaces. The chapter also mentions literary space, which cuts across all of the latter. Some of the Decline's lasting power derives from its practice of a second mode alongside narrative, a style of excursive argument that Gibbon's age often referred to with French names like tableau and peinture, that he associated with philosophy and that he recommended as a corrective, and a form of relief, from narrative accounts. Keywords:domestic space; Edward Gibbon; literary space; philosophy; political space; social space; The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire