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). The essays, by established and younger scholars from Canada, Europe and the United States, explore the function of two key terms in Enlightenment debates regarding 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 taste in relation to the five senses over the long eighteenth century.