The second volume in the LAPASEC series (Landau Paris Studies on the Eighteenth Century), this collection assembles the best contributions to the Paris symposia on the ruin (2004) and the sketch (2006). Written by established and younger scholars from Canada, the United States, and Europe, the essays explore the functions of two key terms in the critical debates centering on the age of Enlightenment: in the contexts of politics and ideology, the literary imagination, art, and theory. Rather than dedicating separate sections to each term, the book deliberately juxtaposes ruin and sketch in five chapters in order to highlight essential relations between two terms that occupied artists, writers, and philosophers. The next volumes of the LAPASEC series, always based on international conferences alternating between Paris and Landau, will explore the senses in the long eighteenth century.