France in the Enlightenment (Harvard Historical Studies)

Daniel Roche, a Sorbonne history professor, explores the effects of this movement in France from the perspective of the men and women who experienced it, comparing and integrating points of view that historians have usually kept separate. Foregrounding possible connections between facts of intellectual and material culture, Roche centers his study around three primary relationships: that of social roles and government action, of the monarchical state to its subjects and corporations, and, finally, of the fundamental values of the period to those of the preceding century.

France in the Enlightenment is not meant to provide an entry-level introduction to the period. Roche, who has devoted his academic career to this era, assumes his reader possesses a fundamental knowledge of its major thinkers and events and, with his enthusiastic, in-depth treatment of the subject matter, can overload the reader with detail. Arthur Goldhammer's English translation is seamless, yet it faithfully reproduces Roche's discursive sidetracks along with his insights. For those already familiar to the period, France in the Enlightenment provides a highly informative compendium and a compelling analysis of the diverse individuals, events, and ideas of 18th-century France. --Bertina Loeffler

Product Description

A panorama of a whole civilization, a world on the verge of cataclysm, unfolds in this magisterial work by the foremost historian of eighteenth-century France. Since Tocqueville's account of the Old Regime, historians have struggled to understand the social, cultural, and political intricacies of this efflorescence of French society before the Revolution. France in the Enlightenment is a brilliant addition to this historical interest.

France in the Enlightenment brings the Old Regime to life by showing how its institutions operated and how they were understood by the people who worked within them. Daniel Roche begins with a map of space and time, depicting France as a mosaic of overlapping geographical units, with people and goods traversing it to the rhythms of everyday life. He fills this frame with the patterns of rural life, urban culture, and government institutions. Here as never before we see the eighteenth-century French "culture of appearances": the organization of social life, the diffusion of ideas, the accoutrements of ordinary people in the folkways of ordinary living--their food and clothing, living quarters, reading material. Roche shows us the eighteenth-century France of the peasant, the merchant, the noble, the King, from Paris to the provinces, from the public space to the private home.

By placing politics and material culture at the heart of historical change, Roche captures the complexity and depth of the Enlightenment. From the finest detail to the widest view, from the isolated event to the sweeping trend, his masterly book offers an unparalleled picture of a society in motion, flush with the transformation that will be its own demise.

Roche, however, did give a good picture of how the stage was set for the Enlightenment, going into almost every facet of day-to-day living in France in the late 18th Century. I got a good picture, though a brief one, of the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI and for the first time in my education, I am able to get these reigning monarchs straight.

Roche has a quirky, teacher style of writing, though clearly expressed. Almost on every page, he will tell you that such-and-such happened for two, three, or four reasons. The numbering method of exposition is an insight into the way his mind is organized. It is also evidence that he did not merely set down his factual findings, but that he thought about what he found and tried to relate them to what was the historical result.

All in all, a very worthwhile project, reading this massive book.