| Summary: | Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the learned journal emerged as a new genre of periodical publication essential to the burgeoning enthusiasm for new learning in early modern Europe. The first of the learned journals, the Journal des scavans, born in 1665 in Paris, contained book abstracts, scientific reports, reader essays and literary news. This format was imitated across Europe, most prolifically in the United Provinces, where Huguenot refugees-turned-journalists often used Francophone learned journals to challenge traditional sources of authority. The model was introduced to Ireland by Jean-Pierre Droz, a journalist, bookseller and publisher, as well as a pastor of the conformed Huguenot congregation in Dublin. With the simple title of A Literary Journal (5 vols, 1744-1749), Droz's periodical resembled the Franco-Dutch erudite journals; in fact, Droz admitted to adapting material from such titles for his own Journal. Scholarship to date has produced a comprehensive picture of two of A Literary Journal's key characteristics. These are firstly its focus on European, especially French-language, books; a second is its reliance on borrowed material, primarily from other learned journals. The original contribution of the present thesis is to recontextualize A Literary Journal, by foregrounding the role of domestic and immediate context, in contrast with existing studies which focus on its historic and European pedigree. After having examined the Journal alongside its source periodicals and contemporary publications, I argue firstly, that the Journal was both Irish and European; secondly, that it contained a significant amount of original material; and thirdly, that its editorial voice conveyed a pervasive doctrinal message in favour of religious toleration and liberal Christianity. In this respect, Droz and his Journal participated in the Irish Enlightenment. A Literary Journal was not just a continental-style learned title in eighteenth-century Ireland. It was a continental-style learned title/or eighteenth-century Ireland.
|
|---|
