Sir, - Heartening though it is to see that the Enlightenment era is the height of intellectual fashion, following Helen Meany's interesting report on the recent international congress in Dublin (The Irish Times, July 28th), it is evident that there is still a long way to go before the writers of the 18th-century period are read in earnest.
For a start: Professor Roy Porter should know better than to assert that Laurence Sterne was born in Dublin: he was born in 1713, in Clonmel. Secondly, I find it hard to recognise Sterne as the man who put "depression and madness on the map"; I had always considered him a writer who created comedy out of life's absurdity - a different thing entirely, I'm afraid. As Sterne himself says in Tristram Shandy - " 'tis wrote, an' please your worships, against the spleen; . . . in laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-bladder."
In addition, counter to Dr Luke Gibbons's assertion that the Enlightenment excluded "the body in pain", what is the famous image of Gulliver bound by Lilliputians firing arrows in his face, if not a spectacular image of the same? (The word "pain" is clearly cited in this particular extract.) Why does Voltaire in the opening pages of Candide depict his hero running the gauntlet for fleeing the field of battle, nearly flayed alive, "muscles and nerves laid bare"?
Indeed if, as Dr Gibbons contends, the Enlightenment excluded "the losers of history, victims of progress and the process of post-colonialism", why is Candide predicated on exploding the idealism that this is "the best of all possible worlds" by demonstrating human suffering and brutality, often as a consequence of abuse of power by authorities of one kind or another? Is Gulliver not a victim of the petty imperialism of Lilliput?
Despite the valiant efforts of the congress to categorise the Enlightenment, the writers, like witty quicksilver eels, seem to have slipped through the nets. Their spirited, satirical portrayal of the pretensions and irrationality of human society is a form of critical perception that we overlook to the detriment not only of our understanding of the past but also of ourselves. - Yours, etc.,
Paul O'Hanrahan, Lower Exchange Street, Dublin 8.