North/South: The Great European Divide

by Ricardo J. Quinones

Overview

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

ISBN-13:	9781487510084
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	08/04/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

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

What People are Saying About This

David M. Hertz

“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.”

Erika Rummel

“This is an excellent and intellectually stimulating book, inviting the reader to ponder the unconventional interpretations offered by the author.”

Editorial 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

From the Publisher

"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."

The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol xlix, no 2, Summer 2018 - Jennifer Tellman