Bolingbroke and His Circle : : The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole / / Isaac Kramnick.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Kramnick, Isaac,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

"Behind this study lie two questions. Why is Bolingbroke, known primarily as a rationalist philosopher of the Enlightenment, so worshipped by English conservatives who are themselves, since Burke, so set against what the Enlightenment represents in political, social, and religious thought? The second question relates to Bolingbroke's public life. How does one explain the intense animosity between Bolingbroke and Walpole which provides the energy for English political life between 1725 and 1740? Is it mere vindictiveness, ambition, jealousy, or the inevitable reflex of the 'outsider' against the 'insider'? Or is it, as the late Victorian writers thought, their falling out at Eton which forever fated them to be protagonists?"—from the Preface.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Preface to Paperback Edition -- Contents -- Introduction: Bolingbroke, Political Thought, and the Augustan Age -- I. The "Anti-Minister": The Political Career and Writings of Lord Bolingbroke -- II. Walpole and the New Economic Order -- III. Bolingbroke and the New England -- IV. Bolingbroke on Natural Law, Society, and the Origins of Government -- V. Walpole on Politics and the English Constitution -- VI. Bolingbroke on Politics and the English Constitution -- VII. Defoe and the Literature of the New Age -- VIII. The Nostalgia of the Augustan Poets -- IX. The Ambivalence of the Augustan Commonwealthman -- Conclusion: Toward a Reassessment of Bolingbroke -- Notes -- Index