Download or read book Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France written by Robert DARNTON and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in 1788, Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris and began to promulgate an exotic theory of healing that almost immediately seized the imagination of the general populace. Robert Darnton's lively study provides a useful contribution to the study of popular culture and the manner in which ideas are diffused down through various social levels.
Download or read book Mesmerism written by Robert Darnton and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mesmerism and the End of the Englightenment in France written by Robert Darnton and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Business of Enlightenment written by Robert DARNTON and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Darnton's history of the Encyclopedie is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of histoire du livre, and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is concerned with the form of the thought of the great philosophes as it materialized into books and with the way books were made and distributed in the business of publishing. This is cultural history on a broad scale, a history of the process of civilization. In tracing the publishing story of Diderot's Encyclopedie, Darnton uses new sources--the papers of eighteenth-century publishers--that allow him to respond firmly to a set of problems long vexing historians. He shows how the material basis of literature and the technology of its production affected the substance and diffusion of ideas. He fully explores the workings of the literary market place, including the roles of publishers, book dealers, traveling salesmen, and other intermediaries in cultural communication. How publishing functioned as a business, and how it fit into the political as well as the economic systems of prerevolutionary Europe are set forth. The making of books touched on this vast range of activities because books were products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict. The ways ideas traveled in early modern Europe, the level of penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the society of the Old Regime, and the connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are brilliantly treated by Darnton. In doing so he unearths a double paradox. It was the upper orders in society rather than the industrial bourgeoisie or the lower classes that first shook off archaic beliefs and took up Enlightenment ideas. And the state, which initially had suppressed those ideas, ultimately came to favor them. Yet at this high point in the diffusion and legitimation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution erupted, destroying the social and political order in which the Enlightenment had flourished. Never again will the contours of the Enlightenment be drawn without reference to this work. Darnton has written an indispensable book for historians of modern Europe.
Download or read book The Literary Underground of the Old Regime written by Robert Darnton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Darnton introduces us to the shadowy world of pirate publishers, garret scribblers, under-the-cloak book peddlers, smugglers, and police spies that composed the literary underground of the Enlightenment. By drawing on an ingenious selection of previously hidden sources, he reveals for the first time the fascinating story of this eighteenth-century counterculture that has virtually disappeared from history.
Download or read book Poetry and the Police written by Robert Darnton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Listen to "An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–50" for songs from Poetry and the PoliceAudio recording copyright © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. In spring 1749, François Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an “abominable poem about the king.” So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense? In this captivating book, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton brilliantly traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society. This lucid and entertaining book reminds us of both the importance of oral exchanges in the history of communication and the power of “viral” networks long before our internet age.
Download or read book Into Print written by Charles Walton and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous clash between Edmund Burke and Tom Paine over the Enlightenment&’s &“evil&” or &“liberating&” potential in the French Revolution finds present-day parallels in the battle between those who see the Enlightenment at the origins of modernity&’s many ills, such as imperialism, racism, misogyny, and totalitarianism, and those who see it as having forged an age of democracy, human rights, and freedom. The essays collected by Charles Walton in Into Print paint a more complicated picture. By focusing on print culture&—the production, circulation, and reception of Enlightenment thought&—they show how the Enlightenment was shaped through practice and reshaped over time. These essays expand upon an approach to the study of the Enlightenment pioneered four decades ago: the social history of ideas. The contributors to Into Print examine how writers, printers, booksellers, regulators, police, readers, rumormongers, policy makers, diplomats, and sovereigns all struggled over that broad range of ideas and values that we now associate with the Enlightenment. They reveal the financial and fiscal stakes of the Enlightenment print industry and, in turn, how Enlightenment ideas shaped that industry during an age of expanding readership. They probe the limits of Enlightenment universalism, showing how demands for religious tolerance clashed with the demands of science and nationalism. They examine the transnational flow of Enlightenment ideas and opinions, exploring its domestic and diplomatic implications. Finally, they show how the culture of the Enlightenment figured in the outbreak and course of the French Revolution. Aside from the editor, the contributors are David A. Bell, Roger Chartier, Tabetha Ewing, Jeffrey Freedman, Carla Hesse, Thomas M. Luckett, Sarah Maza, Renato Pasta, Thierry Rigogne, Leonard N. Rosenband, Shanti Singham, and Will Slauter.
Download or read book Credulity written by Emily Ogden and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers the first comprehensive account of those boom years. Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
Download or read book Galileo Science and the Church written by Jerome J. Langford and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating account of the confrontation between Galileo and the Church of Rome
Download or read book Mesmerism written by Franz Anton Mesmer and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France written by Julia V. Douthwaite and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French Revolution brings to mind violent mobs, the guillotine, and Madame Defarge, but it was also a publishing revolution. Douthwaite explores how the works within this corpus announced the new shapes of literature to come and reveals that vestiges of these stories can be found in novels by the likes of Mary Shelley.
Download or read book Rousseau A Very Short Introduction written by Robert Wokler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2001-08-23 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most profound thinkers of modern history, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a central figure of the European Enlightenment. He was also its most formidable critic, condemning the political, economic, theological, and sexual trappings of civilization along lines that would excite the enthusiasm of romantic individualists and radical revolutionaries alike. In this study of Rousseau's life and works Robert Wokler shows how his philosophy of history, his theories of music and politics, his fiction, educational and religious writings, and even his botany, were all inspired by visionary ideals of mankind's self-realization in a condition of unfettered freedom. He explains how, in regressing to classical republicanism, ancient mythology, direct communion with God, and solitude, Rousseau anticipated some post-modernist rejections of the Enlightenment as well. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightment in France written by Robert Darnton and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism written by Glenn Alexander Magee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mysticism and esotericism are two intimately related strands of the Western tradition. Despite their close connections, however, scholars tend to treat them separately. Whereas the study of Western mysticism enjoys a long and established history, Western esotericism is a young field. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism examines both of these traditions together. The volume demonstrates that the roots of esotericism almost always lead back to mystical traditions, while the work of mystics was bound up with esoteric or occult preoccupations. It also shows why mysticism and esotericism must be examined together if either is to be understood fully. Including contributions by leading scholars, this volume features essays on such topics as alchemy, astrology, magic, Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, Renaissance Hermetism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, numerology, Christian theosophy, spiritualism, and much more. This Handbook serves as both a capstone of contemporary scholarship and a cornerstone of future research.
Download or read book Fighting Terror after Napoleon written by Beatrice de Graaf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe was forged out of the ashes of the Napoleonic wars by means of a collective fight against revolutionary terror. The Allied Council created a culture of in- and exclusion, of people that were persecuted and those who were protected, using secret police, black lists, border controls and fortifications, and financed by European capital holders.
Download or read book Crossings written by Alex Landragin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly "Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Deft writing seduces the reader in a complex tale of pursuit, denial, and retribution moving from past to future. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (Starred Review) Alex Landragin's Crossings is an unforgettable and explosive genre-bending debut—a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes. On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations. With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.
Download or read book The Enlightenment written by Dorinda Outram and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debate over the meaning of 'Enlightenment' began in the eighteenth century and still continues to this day. This period saw the opening of arguments on the nature of man, truth, the place of God and the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. But did the Enlightenment mean the same for men and women, for rich and poor, for Europeans and non-Europeans? In the third edition of her acclaimed book, Dorinda Outram addresses these and other questions about the Enlightenment as controversy increases about its place at the foundation of modernity. She studies it as a global phenomenon, setting the period against broader social changes. This new edition offers a new chapter on political economy, a completely revised further reading section and a new feature on electronic sources to stimulate primary research. This accessible overview will be essential reading for students of eighteenth-century history, philosophy and the history of ideas.
