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"Europe Social conditions 18th century."
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Languages of reform in the eighteenth century : when Europe lost its fear of change
\"Societies perceive \"Reform\" or \"Reforms\" as substantial changes and significant breaks which must be well-justified. The Enlightenment brought forth the idea that the future was uncertain and could be shaped by human beings. This gave the concept of reform a new character and new fields of application. Those who sought support for their plans and actions needed to reflect, develop new arguments, and offer new reasons to address an anonymous public. This book aims to compile these changes under the heuristic term of \"languages of reform.\" It analyzes the structures of communication regarding reforms in the 18th century through a wide variety of topics\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Women's roles in eighteenth-century Europe
This concise historical overview of the existing historiography of women from across eighteenth-century Europe covers women of all ages, married and single, rich and poor. During the 18th century, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, protoindustrialization, and colonial conquest made their marks on women's lives in a variety of ways. Women's Roles in Eighteenth-Century Europe examines women of all ages and social backgrounds as they experienced the major events of this tumultuous period of sweeping social and political change. The book offers an inclusive portrayal of women from across Europe, surveying nations from Portugal to the Russian Empire, from Finland to Italy, including the often overlooked women of Eastern Europe. It depicts queens, an empress, noblewomen, peasants, and midwives. Separate chapters on family, work, politics, law, religion, arts and sciences, and war explore the varying contexts of the feminine experience, from the most intimate aspects of daily life to broad themes and conditions.
eBook
Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Was the century of Voltaire also the century of women? In the eighteenth century changes in the nature of work, family life, sexuality, education, law, religion, politics and warfare radically altered the lives of women. Some of these developments caused immense confusion and suffering; others greatly expanded women's opportunities and worldview - long before the various women's suffrage movements were more than a glimmer on the horizon. This study pays attention to queens as well as commoners; respectable working women as well as prostitutes; women physicists and mathematicians as well as musicians and actresses; feminists as well as their critics. The result is a rich and morally complex tale of conflict and tragedy, but also of achievement.
The book deals with many regions and topics often under-represented in general surveys of European women, including coverage of the Balkans and both European Turkey and Anatolia, of Eastern Europe, of European colonial expansion (particularly the slave trade) and of Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish women's history. Bringing all of Europe into the narrative of early modern women's history challenges many received assumptions about Europe and women in past times, and provides essential background for dealing with issues of diversity in the Europe of today.
eBook
A lady's man : the cicisbei, private morals and national identity in Italy
\"Three people in a marriage: a woman and two men. This was the eighteenth-century Italian aristocratic model of marriage, characterized by the presence of the cicisbeo, the official escort of another man's wife. Did this delineate a clear and brazen sexual depravity or rather a complex and refined social institution, revealing many aspects of Italian civilization in the Age of the Enlightenment? Not only was the presence of a cicisbeo part of a matrimonial, family model; it was also an important factor socially and politically. In a period in which the presence of women at parties was sought--at the theatre and in salons--the lady's escort played an essential part in promoting a couple's social life. Indeed, the company and friendship (and perhaps love) which bound a lady and her escort occurred with the knowledge and under the control of the families of the interested parties. Of course, this 'triangular' arrangement was not unproblematic. The existence of a third party posed a threat to conjugal fidelity and the legitimacy of offspring and, towards the early nineteenth century, when the ideals of Romanticism and the French Revolution were popular there was a rapid decline in the practice. For as Italy reconstructed its national identity alongside other modern European countries the image of private immorality associated with cicisbeism constituted an intolerable blemish\"--Provided by publisher.
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Contested spaces of Nobility in Early Modern Europe
In recent years scholars have increasingly challenged and reassessed the once established concept of the 'crisis of the nobility' in early-modern Europe. Offering a range of case studies from countries across Europe this collection further expands our understanding of just how the nobility adapted to the rapidly changing social, political, religious and cultural circumstances around them. By allowing readers to compare and contrast a variety of case studies across a range of national and disciplinary boundaries, a fuller - if more complex - picture emerges of the strategies and actions employed by nobles to retain their influence and wealth. The nobility exploited Renaissance science and education, disruptions caused by war and religious strife, changing political ideas and concepts, the growth of a market economy, and the evolution of centralized states in order to maintain their lineage, reputation, and position. Through an examination of the differing strategies utilized to protect their status, this collection reveals much about the fundamental role of the 'second order' in European history and how they had to redefine the social and cultural 'spaces' in which they found themselves. By using a transnational and comparative approach to the study of the European nobility, the volume offers exciting new perspectives on this important, if often misunderstood, social group.
eBook
Disorderly families : infamous letters from the Bastille Archives
\"Drunken and debauched husbands; libertine wives; vagabonding children. These and many more are the subjects of requests for confinement written to the king of France in the eighteenth century. These letters of arrest (lettres de cachet) from France's Ancien Regime were often associated with excessive royal power and seen as a way for the king to imprison political opponents. In Disorderly Families, first published in French in 1982, Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault collect ninety-four letters from ordinary families who, with the help of hired scribes, submitted complaints to the king to intervene and resolve their family disputes. Gathered together, these letters show something other than the exercise of arbitrary royal power, and offer unusual insight into the infamies of daily life. From these letters come stories of divorce and marital conflict, sexual waywardness, reckless extravagance, and abandonment. The letters evoke a fluid social space in which life in the home and on the street was regulated by the rhythms of relations between husbands and wives, or parents and children. Most impressively, these letters outline how ordinary people seized the mechanisms of power to address the king and make demands in the name of an emerging civil order. Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault were fascinated by the letters' explosive qualities and by how they both illustrated and intervened in the workings of power and governmentality. Disorderly Families sheds light on Foucault's conception of political agency and his commitment to theorizing how ordinary lives come to be touched by power. This first English translation is complete with an introduction from the book's editor, Nancy Luxon, as well as notes that contextualize the original 1982 publication and eighteenth-century policing practices\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
James Melton's lucid and accessible 2001 study examines the rise of 'the public' in eighteenth-century Europe. A work of comparative synthesis focusing on England, France and the German-speaking territories, this was the first book-length, critical reassessment of what Habermas termed the 'bourgeois public sphere'. During the Enlightenment the Public assumed a new significance as governments came to recognise the power of public opinion in political life; the expansion of print culture created new reading publics and transformed how and what people read; authors and authorship acquired new status, while the growth of commercialized theatres transferred monopoly over the stage from the court to the audience; salons, coffeehouses, taverns and Masonic lodges fostered new practices of sociability. Spanning a variety of disciplines, this important addition to the New Approaches in European History series will be of great interest to students of social and political history, literary studies, political theory, and the history of women.
eBook
The European Jews, Patriotism and the Liberal State 1789-1939
The fragility of the liberal democratic state after 1789 is illustrated in the history of the European Jews from the French Revolution to the Holocaust. Emancipation and hope of emancipation amongst the European Jewish population created a plethora of Jewish identities and forms of patriotism.
This book takes the original approach of studying European Jewish patriotism as a whole, with particular attention given to creative literature. Despite their growing awareness of racial, genocidal hatred, most European Jews between 1789 and 1939 tended to be patriotic toward the countries of their citizenship, an attitude reflected in the literature of the time.
Yet, the common assumption among emancipated Jews that anti-Semitism would fade in a world governed by reason proved false. For millions of European Jews, the infinite possibilities they associated with emancipation came to nothing. The Jewish experience exposed many of the weaknesses and failings of the liberal multicultural state, and demonstrated that its survival cannot be taken for granted but is dependent on vigilance and struggle. By focusing on Jewish patriotism from 1789-1939, this book explores the nature of the liberal state, how it can fail, and the conditions needed for its survival.
eBook