Medievalism and Enlightenment, 1647–1750: Jean Chapelain to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

Critiques of and Enlightenment project increasingly recognize need to historicize Enlightenment debate (Baker and Reill; Darnton). Reframing criticism of Enlightenment in its original eighteenth-century setting has shown that such critiques are not new to our own epoch, but draw on a long history and tradition of their own. only do historians increasingly distinguish between several varieties of Enlightenment (Israel) but it also appears that questioning Enlightenment is germane even to most radical forms of Enlightenment discourse itself. As exemplified most famously by supreme autocritic of Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Enlightenment appears not as a fixed set of philosophical notions but rather as a series of interlocking, often strident debates on what Enlightenment is, or should be, or cannot ever be. (1) As Mark Hulliung writes, Not least significant, albeit most ignored, of many critiques of Enlightenment that have been articulated during last two centuries is one 'age of criticism' made of itself, largely through instigation of Rousseau (7). The Enlightenment's self-criticism, as voiced ultimately but not exclusively by Rousseau, was founded in part on contrasting images of historical light and darkness, equated respectively with and medieval. The binary opposition Lumiere(s) versus tenebres was continually and insistently mobilized in ongoing debate on what human society and culture should be like. So widely accepted were these terms that critics of Enlightenment came to use light-dark metaphor as naturally as did small group of thinkers--the French philosophes--most commonly identified with movement (Delon). Yet very banality of this metaphor invites us to take it seriously. As several scholars have argued, metaphors can fundamentally structure thinking and are central to performance of culture (Lakoff and Johnson; Sapir and Crocker). Recent studies have drawn attention to ways in which Enlightenment metaphor of light could structure not only thought bur also concrete action, particularly in political arena (Reichardt). The Enlightenment metaphor of light is rendered complex by its own genealogy. The metaphor was not a new one, for eighteenth-century discourse it from Italian humanism, which had in turn borrowed it from medieval theology. Alluding to medieval metaphor pitting Christian light against pagan darkness, some varieties of humanism had polemically presented pagan Antiquity instead as a source of light, and Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignorance. Petrarch, of Humanism, was also the father of concept or attitude which regards Middle Ages as 'Dark Ages' (Mommsen 242). At same time, however, humanist light-dark metaphor was subject to nuances and qualifications. While most strident versions of humanism did indeed posit a clear opposition to medieval, humanism as a whole still co-existed with medievalism, exemplified among others by pseudo-chivalric epics of Ariosto and Tasso, which mixed classical elements with narrative models drawn from medieval romance. The Enlightenment expressed a more fundamental aversion to medieval. As an Age of Light, eighteenth century perceived itself to be absolute opposite of Dark Ages. Reacting against hardening of orthodoxies during previous centuries, philosophes saw medieval institutionalization of religion as a source of darkness. Following humanist cue, they opposed Middle Ages to pagan culture of classical Antiquity, on which they modeled their own ideals. Antiquity, perceived as purveyor of timeless, universal values rather than divisive particularisms, became a powerful ally in ideological battle for a new society. As John Pocock has written, modernity was engrossed in study of Antiquity, and could not live without reinforcing Europe's obsession with its classical past. …