Acknowledgements
The book that is now in your hands is the result of many years of thought and research, a particularly open-minded and welcoming department, as well as many fruitful encounters and projects. It could not have been conceived or written without the environment nurtured by Professor Mihaela Irimia within the English Department at the University of Bucharest and the exceptional team of eighteenth-century scholars that she brought together. I am grateful to Professor Irimia for her unyielding hospitality towards ever-new approaches and ideas – usually gleaned at the intersection of literary, cultural, and intellectual history – and for her erudite and thoughtful supervision of my doctoral dissertation, which the present book is based on. I am delighted to work alongside colleagues and fellow scholars of the long eighteenth century such as Bogdan Ștefănescu, Sorana Corneanu, Dragoș Ivana, Petruța Năiduț, Mihai Stroe, and Andreea Paris-Popa, all of whom I’d like to thank for the parts they played in my own intellectual and professional development. I have no words to express my immense gratitude to Sorana for the inexhaustible support she has shown me ever since my undergraduate years. The initial germs that this book has now burst out of were gathered during her courses on eighteenth-century literature and the intellectual history of the imagination, not to mention her keen and incredibly careful supervision of much of my early work. I’m delighted that our collaboration continues to shape my research today and thank her for the many thought-provoking questions and insights our conversations have always run up against, as well as for the excellent model of intellectual courage and charity that she never fails to offer. I also want to thank Sorana and the two other members of my doctoral supervision committee, Vlad Alexandrescu and Dragoș Ivana, for their invaluable help throughout the years and for their crucial contributions to the shape of my thesis.
The main lineaments of my argument were also developed and refined during a number of research projects and visits. Research for this book was carried out with support from two grants of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-ID-PCE2020- 2579, contract number PCE 105/2021 (Between Truth and Freedom: Enlightenment Answers to ‘Thinking for Oneself’) and project number PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-1407, contract number PCE 116/2022 (The Art of Thinking in the Enlightenment: An Interdisciplinary Reappraisal), both within PNCDI III. The very early stages of my research were also aided in 2015–2017 by a UEFISCDI grant on the subject of ‘An Intellectual History of the Imagination: Bridging Literature, Philosophy and Science in Early Modern and Enlightenment England,’ led by Sorana Corneanu. I want to thank my team members and all of the fellow researchers and distinguished scholars I met while working on these projects, particularly Susan James, Angus Gowland, Stephen Clucas, Michael Deckard, Guido Giglioni, and Rowan Boyson, who provided key advice on my work with overwhelming kindness and excitement. These projects also allowed me to work on a number of interconnected publications and some of the chapters in this book are based on heavily-reworked versions of two previously-published articles. Chapter 1 is grafted on my article titled ‘From Tranquillity to Agitation: Remedies Using the Imagination and the Passions in Early Modern Thought’ (Society & Politics, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2016, 36–55), while Chapter 4 builds on some of the insights and arguments advanced in my article on ‘The Associative Imagination and Divine Passions in Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)’ (University of Bucharest Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2015, 101–8). I thank the editors of both journals for allowing me to revisit and republish these materials.
This project would not have come to fruition without the trust and support of the editorial board at Brill and the wonderfully pleasant and smooth collaboration I encountered here. I am deeply grateful to Professor Han van Ruler, who showed great enthusiasm for my proposal from the very beginning, as well as to Ivo Romein and Arjan van Dijk, who offered the most kind and eager assistance every step of the way. I also wish to express my gratitude to the two anonymous expert reviewers for their thorough scrutiny of my manuscript, not to mention the vital comments and suggestions that allowed this book to assume its final form.
I cannot possibly fail to thank my good friends and colleagues Andrei Nae, Dragoș Manea, and Eduard Ghiță for their colossal support and wholehearted guidance, which I could always depend on, as well as for the stimulating atmosphere of sibling competition that we managed to create among us. I’d like to thank Dragoș in particular for his unwavering belief in me over the years and for lifting me up in the very difficult final months before the completion of this book. I owe him the small touches of humanity that occasionally show up in my style, the rare dash, and a whole lot more.
Finally, I want to thank my entire family and all of my friends for their constant love, care, and encouragement. Special thanks to my amazing friend, Cristina Mușat – no one has taken greater or better care of me in the last few years. Yet my greatest gratitude goes to my grandparents, Elena and Florin Cucu. I could never have achieved a quarter of what I have so far, nor be who I am today without their warmth and wisdom. This book is dedicated to their memory.