Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: From the Salon to the World: Sociability and
Distinction
Chapter 1: Sociability and Hospitality
Chapter 2: The Worldly Sphere
Chapter 3: Men of Letters and Worldliness
Part II: News and Opinion: The Politics of High Society
Chapter 4: Word Games: Literature and Sociability
Chapter 5: Society's Judgment and Worldly Opinion
Chapter 6: Politics in the Salon
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Antoine Lilti teaches social and cultural history at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is former editor of the Annales journal. He is the author of Figures publiques : l'invention de la célébrité (1750-1850) and co-editor of Penser l'Europe au XVIIIe siècle: commerce, civilisation, empire.
"There is no question that this is an absolutely brilliant book,
the fruit of exhaustive research, and a historiographical game
changer. Lilti does a masterful job of stripping away the veneer of
retrospective characterizations of salons, and he presents us with
a meticulous portrait of salons as they functioned and as they were
perceived in their own time. Anyone writing about the intellectual
climate of the eighteenth century will have to contend with his
argument."--Paul Friedland, Journal of Modern History
"[A] useful contribution to redirecting the historiographical
orthodoxy on salon sociability..."--H-Net
"Antoine Lilti's book is a masterpiece. Grounded in exhaustive
social historical research, it offers the most complete picture
ever produced of 'salon society' in eighteenth-century France,
dispelling countless myths and revealing the social background
against which so much of the Enlightenment took shape. At the same
time, its trenchant and original approach, grounded in cutting-edge
social and cultural theory, makes it essential reading for anyone
interested
in what Robert Darnton famously described as the 'social history of
ideas.'"--David A. Bell, Princeton University
"A rich and multi-faceted account of an essential
eighteenth-century social and cultural context. If we know it today
as the 'salon,' it was only named as such after the fact. What is
more, Lilti argues, this world never did quite conform to the
standard notions that we have inherited of it, whether via Rousseau
esque aversion to aristocratic culture or post Revolutionary
nostalgia for polite society."--Geoffrey Turnovsky,
Eighteenth-Century Studies
"The picture Lilti paints of the eighteenth-century salon stands in
stark contrast to the one drawn by those who have tried to write
its history in the light of Habermas's theory of the bourgeois
public sphere. A number of the broader claims made by this dense
and rewarding book, however, suggest that salons matter more than
we have previously thought. Not only has Lilti reaffirmed that the
subject will remain a vital element in a number of on going
historical
debates--concerning the roles of writers, the dimensions of the
public sphere, the formation of public opinion, and the nature of
Old Regime politics--but he has opened up new lines of inquiry
by
exploring such themes as the construction of social identities, the
links between mondanité and literature, and the constitution of
national stereotypes."--Steven D. Kale, H-France
"Le monde des salons offers a fresh and innovative perspective on
the salons of eighteenth-century Paris. Antoine Lilti is an
important new voice in the history of early modern France, and his
stimulating book is sure to make a splash in the historiography of
old regime cultural practices. Lilti writes with the grace and
confidence of a seasoned professional, and Le monde des salons is
certainly the new 'must read' on the history of the
pre-Revolutionary French
salon."--Jeremy Caradonna, Department of History, University of
Alberta
"Antoine Lilti's Le Monde des salons is the most thorough and
important study of eighteenth-century French salons to date.
Methodologically sophisticated, it distinguishes between how
contemporaries talked about salons and what actually took place in
them. In doing so, it explodes several myths. First, it puts the
lie to recent interpretations that have depicted salons as
crucibles of modern egalitarianism--places where social hierarchy
gave way to
polite, enlightened conversation among equals. Second, Lilti
shatters the image of salons as literary founts of enlightenment.
Third, Lilti challenges the Tocquevillian notion that salons were
sites for the
elaboration of abstract literary politics and oppositional public
opinion. Far from providing naïve, disempowered philosophes a place
to concoct seditious ideologies, salons were where savvy socialites
bolstered their social, cultural, and political capital."--Charles
Walton, University of Warwick
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