The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British Enlightenment by Roy Porter (review)

85 stressed from its very beginning—may be more clearly inferred by taking into account the idea of fragmentation, which is in line with the episodic nature of the narrative and with didactic statements in the Preface. The two final papers discuss Roxana. Carlo Pagetti shows how subtly Defoe’s ambiguities help to build the main character into an icon of triumphant femininity , ironically turning a story of female corruption and repentance into a story of male desire and illusion. Angelo Canavesi ’s emphasis on process explores Roxana ’s artistic representation through language in relation to the dichotomy story/ history. The ambiguity of the text arises from changes in its linguistic level; two series of recurrent keywords turn ambiguous because their literal meaning is altered in accordancewiththecontexttothe point of creating a subtle process of semantic escape. Marta Bardotti University of Pisa ROY PORTER. The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British Enlightenment. New York and London: Norton, 2000. Pp. xxiv ⫹ 728. $35. Was there a British Enlightenment different from the one across the Channel? Mr. Porter’s pantheon includes Newton, Locke, Hume, Mandeville, David Hartley , Gibbon, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley, Paine, Bentham, Godwin, Wollstonecraft , Edgeworth—but recent treatments that scant their talents only reveal a ‘‘blind spot.’’ Aware that there never was a monolithic ‘‘Enlightenment project’’ (for example Peter Gay’s ‘‘science of freedom’’), he nevertheless argues that the British claim for a place in Kant’s Aufklärung is equally compelling: ‘‘Buoyant pragmatism, underpinned by a Baconian Philosophy of action.’’Unlike the continental philosophes who assaulted the ancien régime, orthodox Christianity, and priestly hegemony, the far-lessradical British, Mr. Porter insists, sought to change a mindset and reform a moribund religion and social structure with gradualism, common sense, and civic responsibility . As one might expect, Mr. Porter celebrates a progressive, life-affirming era, even as he attacks the wrongheaded and ‘‘crazed’’ postmodernists like Foucault, Baudrillard, and their followers: ‘‘to see trumpeted Enlightenment programs as nothing more than attempts at social control is rather trite.’’ However, ‘‘postmodernism has one virtue at least—it has reopened inquiries into modernity and its origins.’’ Yet Mr. Porter bristles at late twentieth-century ideologues such as Terry Castle, who sneer at what was not ‘‘an age of reason but one of paranoia, repression and incipient madness.’’ Such intellectuals distort one of the brightest chapters in human history. The book follows a roughly chronological order commencing with Locke (‘‘the perfect prototype’’) and ending with Paine, Godwin, Malthus, and a few other sympathizers of the French Revolution. Mr. Porter patiently explicates each figure ’s ideas and intellectual context, revealing onlyasmuchaswastransparently written. He does, however, tend toward hero worship: ‘‘Newton was the god who put English science on the map, an intellectual colossus, flanked by Bacon and Locke.’’ A single sentence brings up Newton’s theological and superstitious ideas about Christianity. Mr. Porter always focuses on the future , avoiding or glossing over negative or recalcitrant moments, as in his discussion of the Enlightenment’s taking up ‘‘the cause of the individual or minority, 86 oppressed by bigotry or superstition.’’He alludes, for example, to Toland’s refreshing plea in his Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714) and the legislation of 1753, but then Mr. Porter underplays the tragic outcome: ‘‘publicclamourledtoits revocation in the next year.’’ Violent rioting broke out in London in this disgraceful chauvinist exhibition of English insularity. Nevertheless, this readable book could be useful to readers searching for, yes, lowercase enlightenment, and finding accurate summaries of the main ideas of the figures covered. Mr. Porter provides a rounded picture, for example acknowledging that Tom Paine, the scourge of European aristocracy, for all his radicalism , preached ‘‘‘that property will ever be unequal is certain,’ on account of differentials in talent and industry.’’ Mr. Porter can be one-sided, too. Swift is simply put down as a reactionary. The fourth part of Gulliver’s Travels with its trenchant attack on human potentiality and reason never comes under scrutiny. Pope fares better; An Essay on Man, ‘‘readslikeLockein heroiccouplets.’’Yet Mr. Porter scores the poet for acting as a prince of the pen looking down at the Grub Street drones, foot soldiers of the print...