Volney: ‘The Ruins' and ‘Catechism of Natural Law'
Volney: ‘The Ruins' and ‘Catechism of Natural Law'
Volney was once as influential as Tom Paine, and the author of one of the most popular works of the French Revolutionary era. The Ruins of Empires makes an argument for popular sovereignty, couched in the alluring and accessible form of an Oriental dream-tale. A favourite of both Thomas Jefferson, who translated it, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the Ruins advances a scheme of radical, utopian politics premised upon the deconstruction of all the world's religions. It was widely celebrated by radicals in Britain and America, and exercised an enormous influence on poets from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Walt Whitman for its indictments of tyranny and priestcraft. Volney instead advocates a return to natural precepts shorn of superstition, set out in his sequel, the Catechism of Natural Law. These days Volney enjoys a high profile in African-American Studies as a proponent of Black Egyptianism.
- Provides an accessible and engaging translation of a once-canonical, bestselling work
- Recovers an author who is central in the transition between the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century French social and political thought
- Includes an appendix with translations of key passages on Black Egyptianism which were influential in discourses of Black nationalism
Product details
February 2024Paperback
9781108717267
270 pages
215 × 137 × 14 mm
0.34kg
Available
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Table of Contents
- Translators' preface
- Introduction
- Chronology of Volney's life
- Further reading
- Biographical notes
- The Ruins
- Catechism of Natural Law
- Appendix I. Volney's endnotes and sources
- Appendix II. Volney's Black Egyptianist passages
- Appendix III. Significant textual variants
- Index.
