North/South: The Great European Divide
© 2016
The division of European society and culture along a North/South axis was one of the most decisive and enduring developments in the modern world. In North/South, which completes a trilogy of works devoted to the study of the mind and body of Europe, Ricardo J. Quinones examines the momentous early modern origins of this division. Quinones focuses on four concepts connected with the Protestant Reformation whose emergence defines the rise of the North and the subjugation of the South: Christian liberty, skepticism, tolerance, and time. Tracing their influence through the political and philosophical conflicts of the era and forward into the Enlightenment, he suggests that they constitute the basis of Europe’s transformation between the sixteenth century and the dawn of the industrial revolution.
A fascinating combination of cultural and intellectual history, philosophy, and comparative literature written in the vein of Quinones’ award-winning Dualisms, this work, called “dazzling” by one critic, shows a contemporary pertinence with the relapse of the South into the subordinate position which it was thought to have overcome.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 192 pages
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.5in x 9.0in
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Reviews
"Ricardo Quinones offers a sweeping exploration into the North and South division in which he succinctly describes not only his own perspective, but also perspectives of early modern to modern writers, scholars, philosophers, and statesmen…This intellectual history offers an intriguing view of the origin of the Europe’s North-South division that continues to the present."
Jennifer Tellman, Louisiana State University
The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol xlix, no 2, Summer 2018“This is an excellent and intellectually stimulating book, inviting the reader to ponder the unconventional interpretations offered by the author.”
Erika Rummel, Department of History, University of Toronto“In North/South, Ricardo J. Quinones eloquently moves from the greatest writers, to the greatest historians of ideas to the actual history as it occurred on the ground. The author’s erudite and thought-provoking work goes a long way toward straightening out the complex cultural history that divides the fate of north and south. North/South is the culmination of a lifetime of thinking and writing about the great literature, the key ideas, and the broader cultural history that unfolded with such marked contrast in two different realms of the modern world.”
David M. Hertz, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University -
Author Information
Ricardo J. Quinones is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at Claremont McKenna College. -
Table of contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Ground-works
Chapter 2: Decline and Resistance
Chapter 3: The Challenge of Ideas
Chapter 4: Tolerance Twin to Incredulity
Chapter 5: The Paradox of Time and the Moderns
Chapter 6: Major Figures and Causality
Chapter 7: Centering the Great Bases in Thought
Chapter 8: English Thought: John Milton, John Locke and John Stuart Mill
Chapter 9: The Edict of Nantes, Toleration and Voltaire
Chapter 10: The Pending Revival of the South
Chapter 11: Toward a Summation
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