Selfhood in the Early Finance Capitalism of Manon Lescaut

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masano Yamashita
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Literary Description ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Manon Lescaut ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Finance Capitalism

Abstract Prévost’s memoir-novel, L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, engages with the challenges of deploying traditional modes of literary description (characterology and allegorization) in the nascent reign of finance capitalism. This article examines the interrelationship between abstraction and material existence in the early eighteenth-century French bestseller Manon Lescaut. By underscoring the ambivalences of class ideology via the context of financial revolution, I argue that Prévost experiments with a new moral economy of selfhood that grapples with, and perhaps ultimately loosens itself from, the strictures of ancien régime social identity.

scholarly journals "Gardez-vous-en bien ... de la brochure"

1970 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Michiel Van Dam
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Social Upheaval

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Austrian Netherlands were plagued by politicalturmoil and social upheaval, brought forth by a reaction against the reformatory movementset up by the Habsburg government. The contestation of Joseph II's reformist policywas performed in public, as the region was flooded with polemical pamphlets, ideologicaltreatises and many other types of popular writings during (but also before and after) theperiod of the Brabant Revolution (1787-1789). Pamphlets have stood at the centre ofattention for historiography on Belgian political culture at the end of the ancien régime,yet this wide employment of the source material has not led to a comparative overview ofthe way these writings have been used in historical research. This article will attempt tofill this gap, by first providing a methodological typology of several historiographicaluses of a particular pamphlet, the Manifeste du Peuple Brabançon, written at the end of1789, and signed by the leader of the conservative opposition, Hendrik Van der Noot.Secondly, I will attempt to show how eighteenth-century pamphleteers used a multitudeof discourses at their disposal, by briefly discussing another set of (pre-revolutionary)pamphlets. This has immediate consequences for the current understanding of eighteenth-centuryBrabant political culture, which, so I argue, should not be considered discursivelymonolithic (containing one political language) but pluralist (containing multiple politicallanguages).

Hesitant Steps: Acceptance of the Gregorian Calendar in Eighteenth-Century Geneva

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 544-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Powell McNutt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Gregorian Calendar ◽  
Julian Calendar ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
At Will ◽  
The Catholic Church

History demonstrates that the calendar is a tool of far more significance than simply a means to organize units of time. For Roman high priests prior to the reign of Julius Caesar, the calendar was a tool of power, symbolizing political supremacy over society through the manipulation of time at will. Under Pope Gregory XIII, the calendar was a symbol of papal responsibility to ensure the proper worship of the Catholic Church. In the case of European Protestants, the Julian calendar was a symbol of religious identity and protest against Catholic domination. Likewise, within revolutionary France, the Calendrier Républicain symbolized the rejection of the Ancien Régime and Catholicism. These few examples are an indication that throughout history in various times and places calendars have proven to represent more to humanity than mere time reckoning methods. Consequently, one may approach the study of the calendar as a means to grasp cultural and religious identity within specific regional contexts.

The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Finance ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Church

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

A Lawyer's Defense of a Wine Merchant against a Carpenter's Deposition: A Story about Friendship and Betrayal

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-384
Author(s):  
Santo L. Aricò
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parlement Of Paris ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Sacred Laws

In 1770, Antoine-Louis Séguier, the avocat général (king's advocate) of the Parlement of Paris, defended Jean-Baptiste Dubarle, a Parisian wine merchant, against charges of theft, seduction, kidnapping, and adultery initiated by a carpenter, Eustache Chefdeville. For all of the offenses, Chefdeville demanded monetary reparation.The case, summarized in a mémoire, connects the history of family law in France under the ancien régime to the skillful use of lawyerly forensics. But it also relates to literary portrayals of social scapegraces who betray the esteemed values of friendship and gratitude: in fact, this member of Paris's menu peuple emerges from the pages of the case abstract as a dissembling traitor. Séguier's legal brief, viewed as a work of fiction, projects Chefdeville as an ungrateful betrayer who feigns comradery. In Séguier's telling, this disfigured pariah, albeit socially inferior, takes his place next to the deceptive worldlings described in many eighteenth-century novels. Like them, he violates the sacred laws of sincerity, turning himself into a moral pervert. Séguier's mémoire is rich precisely because it demonstrates how a skilled lawyer attempting to win his case adopts the form of a story characterized by all the literary qualities of the day—love, friendship, avarice, and betrayal. It illustrates a classic legal approach and also reads like a novel from beginning to end.

The Decline and Fall of the House of Guise as an Ecclesiastical Dynasty

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Bergin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The Church

In the eighteenth century Louis XV's minister, Cardinal Dubois, defended himself against papal criticism of his appetite for church benefices by ordering that a list of benefices held by his seventeenth-century counterparts be prepared and sent to Rome. It was his way of proving that he was much less voracious than they had been.His defence serves to remind the historian of the extent to which the ancien régime church was dominated by powerful families and ministers, who enriched themselves considerably by amassing wealthy benefices. However, none of these cardinal-ministers, from Richelieu to Dubois, succeeded in founding ecclesiastical dynasties capable of preserving intact after their death the ecclesiastical possessions they had acquired; dynasties of this type had practically vanished by the mid-seventeenth century, having fallen foul of both the crown and of church reformers. While drawing enormous incomes from their benefices, Richelieu, Mazarin and Dubois accepted that their benefices, like their other offices, should be at the king's disposal after their death. This had not always been the case. Had Dubois’ historical curiosity been more disinterested, he would have discovered that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ecclesiastical dynasties of varying importance and staying-power had flourished within the French church, characterized by their ability to acquire and transmit large numbers of wealthy and prestigious benefices to family members over several generations. The minimum require ment for success was the breeding of younger sons and daughters prepared to ‘enter the church’ in order to perpetuate dynastic control of benefices.

scholarly journals The Devil in the Holy Water: Political Libel in Eighteenth-Century France

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Darnton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Holy Water ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The Devil

This lecture discusses an investigation of the vast but unstudied literature of libel that appeared in the French book market during the eighteenth century. It concentrates on four interconnected libelles from 1771 to 1793, and combines an analysis of the genre with an account of a colony of French refugees in London. These refugees were noted to have made slanderous attacks on public figures in Versailles, and even grafted a blackmail operation on to their literary speculations. The lecture shows how an ideological current was able to erode authority under the Ancien Régime and became absorbed in a new political culture.

scholarly journals Percepciones de la fiesta en la España del siglo XVIII : la mirada ajena

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramón Maruri Villanueva
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Social ◽  
Marked Preference ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Shed Light

La fiesta en la España Moderna, con acusada preferencia la pública y barroca, tía venido siendo, desde 1980 fundamentalmente, un campo histohográfico bien frecuentado por los investigadores. Enmarcado en él, el presente trabajo se centra en cómo fue percibida por un conjunto de extranjeros que recorrieron la España del siglo XVIII. Sus percepciones, que hemos llamado mirada ajena, nos son conocidas a través de la denominada literatura de viajes y hablan de la fiesta pública y privada, profana y religiosa, civil y política. Dicha literatura, que no había sido utilizada con carácter sistemático en monografías sobre la fiesta, hemos considerado que podía iluminar tanto aspectos de ésta como de la mentalidad de quienes la recrearon en sus diarios y cartas: cuáles llamaron su atención; qué juicios les merecieron; en qué medida algunos de éstos sirvieron para construir, perpetuar o atemperar estereotipos; qué cambios pudieron producirse en los rituales festivos y de qué cambios en la realidad social podían dar cuenta; en qué se desviaba, o no, la percepción de los viajeros de la de españoles de la época o de la imagen recuperada por la investigación histórica contemporánea.Since about 1980 festivities in Spain of the Ancien Régime, with a marked preference for public and baroque festivities, have been a historiographic field frequently studied by researchers. Set in the frame of reference of this field, this work centers on how festivities were perceived by a group of foreigners who traveled around Spain in the eighteenth century. Their perceptions, which we call the foreign perspective, are known to us through what is called travel literature, and speak about various kinds of festivities: public and prívate, secular and religious, civilian and political. We believed that this literature, which had not been used systematically in studies of festivities, could shed light not only on facets of the festivities themselves but also on aspects of the mentality of those that described them in their diaries and letters: which festivities captured their attention; what judgments they made about them; to what extent these judgments served to construct, perpetúate or modérate stereotypes; what changos might have taken place in the festivo rituals and what changos in the social reality they could reveal; in what respects the perception of the travelers differed from that of Spaniards of the time or from the image recovered by contemporary historie research.

THE BRITISH–IRISH UNION OF 1801

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 165-180
Author(s):  
William Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Research Interest ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Professional History

AbstractFOR anyone so improbable as a historian of France to presume to address a conference about a landmark in British and Irish history requires some explanation. It lies in a bizarre twist of professional history which left me, for the best part of twenty years, teaching late eighteenth-century Ireland as a special subject. My research interest, however, has always lain in the ancien régimein France.

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