Miller’s New Book on the Enlightenment and Political Fiction

Cecilia Miller, associate professor of history and tutor at the College of Social Studies, is the author of Enlightenment and Political Fiction: The Everyday Intellectual, published by Routledge, 2016.

The book argues that much of the important political and economic theory of the era emerged first in works of fiction rather than in theory.

“Unlike studies of the Enlightenment which focus only on theory and nonfiction,” Miller states in her abstract, “this study of fiction makes evident that there was a vibrant concern for the constructive as well as destructive aspects of emotion during the Enlightenment, rather than an exclusive concern for rationality.”