Failing to throw his mind back into the past : the reception of David Hume’s History of England in early nineteenth-centruy British historiography
From narrow partisan attacks on his political and religious views to more sophisticated discussions of his mode of historical writing, British writers in the first half of the nineteenth-century responded in various ways to David Hume's History of England. The response to Hume's history...
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| Format: | Others |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2009
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9745 |
| Summary: | From narrow partisan attacks on his political and religious views to more sophisticated
discussions of his mode of historical writing, British writers in the first half
of the nineteenth-century responded in various ways to David Hume's History of England.
The response to Hume's history represented both continuity and change. Nineteenth-
century writers introduced a new dimension to the discourse on Hume's history
while continuing the political and religious controversies that began with the publication
of Hume's work in 1754.
Nineteenth-century Whigs continued to question Hume's account of the political
struggle in England during the seventeenth century while maintaining that Hume was
a mere royal apologist. Critics of Hume's religious views persisted in reproaching
Hume for his impiety and continued to object to his alleged unfair treatment of religious
groups in history. Nineteenth-century criticism of Hume's history added attacks
on Hume's historical method and his narrative style to these political and religious
challenges. Hume's historical method was criticized for being ahistorical and anachronistic;
Hume was cited for writing "conjectural" rather than "authentic" history.
Hume's narrative style was reproached for lacking vividness and for being too remote
and distant. This paper investigates the meanings of these various criticisms and argues
that they represented a new mode of historical consciousness that emerged at the
beginning of the nineteenth-century.
Hume's history was an important influence on the thinking of British writers in
the first half of the nineteenth-century. This paper contends that an examination of the
response to Hume's history provides an important way of understanding the historical
consciousness of that period. === Arts, Faculty of === History, Department of === Graduate |
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