Abstract

Introduction: All is trash that reason cannot reach : unenlightened writers and the postmodern world -- Learning to read, learning to listen in Robinson Crusoe -- The hymns of Isaac Watts and postmodern worship : aesthetic knowledge as a response to the Enlightenment critique of religion -- Jonathan Swift's information machine and the critique of technology -- Christopher Smart's poetry and the dialogue between science and theology -- Festival and discipline in revolutionary France and postmodern times -- Remembering things past : tradition as a way of knowing in Edmund Burke and Hans-Georg Gadamer -- Reconciling the heart with the head : the poetry of William Cowper and the thought of Michael Polanyi.