SOURCE: Starobinski, Jean. “From the Decline of Erudition to the Decline of Nations: Gibbon's Response to French Thought.” Daedalus 105, no. 3 (1976): 189-207.
In the following essay, Starobinski analyzes arguments in Gibbon's Essai sur l'étude de la literature, an early work by the historian which concerns itself with the relationship between the decline in letters and the decline in nations.
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