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In this innovative study, the author carves out a new field, a sociology of literature in which he offers insightful commentary about the nexus of literature and society. Calling on history, sociology, and psychology as well as literature as points of reference, Allan Pasco examines the conceptual shift in the ideal of love in eighteenth-century France. Pasco explores the radical, though gradual, changes that occurred during the Enlightenment with respect to how the emotion of love was viewed. Earlier, love had been subordinate to the demands of family, king, and deity; passion was dangerous, and to be avoided. But over time, individual happiness became the "greatest good," and passion the measure of love. Authors as diverse as Marivaux, Marmontel, Rousseau, Baculard d'Arnaud, Pigault-Lebrun and Madame de Staël make it clear that the ideal of rapturous love did not live up to its billing: it did not last, and it brought destructive fantasies, an epidemic of disease, the "scourge" of divorce, and considerable anguish. Still, as Pasco points out, passion became and remained the ideal, and the Romantics were left to plumb its nature.
An ambitious new vision of French citizenship from the perspective of Africans and Antilleans living in the colonies and mainland France. Lorelle Semley explores the ways in which these colonial subjects used French democratic ideals to demand rights and redefine the meanings of freedom and 'Frenchness'.
A rich intellectual history of the reinvention of France's colonial empire in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.
This “rich . . . highly enjoyable portrait of an extraordinary moment in French history” introduces us to 7 dazzling aristocrats who rose and fell during the French Revolution (Guardian). Benedetta Craveri reveals the history of the Libertine generation “whose youth coincided with the French monarchy’s final moment of grace—a moment when . . . a style of life based on privilege and the spirit of caste might acknowledge the widespread demand for change, and . . . reconcile itself with Enlightenment ideals of justice, tolerance, and citizenship.” Here we meet 7 characters who Craveri singles out not only for their “romantic character” but also for “the keenness with which the...