Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility
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17th century
18th century
A01=Chad Denton
Age Group_Uncategorized
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Author_Chad Denton
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=HBLL
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSA
Category=JFSC
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Early modern philosophy
Early modern sexuality
Eighteenth century
Enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
French cultural history
French history
French intellectual hitsory
French nobility
Language_English
Libertinism
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Seventeenth century
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781498537261
- Weight: 472g
- Dimensions: 159 x 238mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2016
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The image of the debauched French aristocrat of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is one that still has power over the international public imagination, from the unending fascination with the Marquis de Sade to the successes of the film Ridicule. Drawing on memoirs, letters, popular songs and pamphlets, and political treatises, The Enlightened and Depraved: Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility traces the origins of this powerful stereotype from between the reign of Louis XIV and the Terror of the French Revolution. The decadent and enlightened noble of early modern France, the libertine, was born in a push to transform the nobility from a warrior caste into an intelligentsia. Education itself had become a power through which the privileged could set themselves free from old social and religious restraints. However, by the late eighteenth century, the libertine noble was already falling under attack by changing attitudes toward gender, an emphasis on economic utility over courtly service, and ironically the very revolutionary forces that the enlightened nobility of the court and Paris helped awaken. In the end, the libertine nobility would not survive the French Revolution, but the basic idea of knowledge as a liberating force would endure in modernity, divorced from a single class.
Chad Denton earned his PhD in history from the University of Missouri.
