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Visions
and Revisions of Eighteenth-Century France Edited by Christine Adams, Jack
R. Censer, and Lisa Jane Graham
1997 | 6 x 9 inches
European History
Cloth: $59.00 SH | ISBN:
978-0-271-01636-8
Paperback: $20.95 SH | ISBN: 978-0-271-02609-1
This
volume brings together eight essays (all but one previously unpublished)
that offer innovative strategies for studying society and culture
in eighteenth-century France. Divided into three sections, the chapters
map out current research paths in social, cultural, and political
history. The authors engage the most heated subjects of debate in
the field today, including the changing nature of political life in
the age of Enlightenment, the role of public opinion in undermining
absolutism, and the impact of gender on social relationships and political
language in the late eighteenth century. They demonstrate a marked
interest in the lives of ordinary and humble French people, finding
that exclusion from the main corridors of power fostered cunning and
resourcefulness, not political indifference or ignorance.
The articles encompass the Old Regime and the revolutionary era
without falling into the teleological trap of using the former as
the backdrop for the events of 1789. On the contrary, many of the
authors consciously avoid this bias by investigating the Old Regime
in its own right or by consciously linking the pre- and post-revolutionary
eras. This decision alone marks an important turning of the tide.
By establishing a dialogue between the Old Regime and the revolution,
this volume implicitly pays homage to those historians who insist
on the structural continuities that underlay the rupture of 1789.
Contributors are Cissie Fairchilds, Christine Adams, Orest Ranum,
Lisa Jane Graham, Harvey Chisick, John Garrigus, Lenard Berlanstein,
and Jack Censer.
Christine
Adams is Assistant Professor of History at St. Mary’s College
of Maryland.
Jack R. Censer is Professor of History at George Mason University.
His most recent book is The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment.
Lisa Jane Graham is Assistant Professor of History at Haverford
College. She is the author of If the King Only Knew: On the Margins
of Absolutism in Eighteenth-Century France.
