The essays in this volume share a common concern with investigating Enlightenment categories of historical understanding and determining how these categories helped shape Enlightenment culture. The contributors address the question of how eighteenth-century writers make sense of the past--how they interpret it, give it meaning and form, and deploy it for their own practical, aesthetic, and ideological purposes.

Contributors and contents:

Frank Palmeri, Conjectural History and the Origins of Sociology

Stuart Peterfreund, From the Forbidden to the Familiar:...