Fiction and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Europe, 1500-1800

Exploring fiction from the Italian Renaissance to the French Revolution, the contributors to this collection demonstrate the significant role that fiction plays, not only in a variety of literary genres, but also in the formation of philosophical ideas, political theories, and the law. They show that fiction is best understood as a frontier that both demarcates literary genres and disciplines of knowledge and allows for the circulation of ideas between them.