France in the Enlightenment
By: Daniel Roche ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Series: Harvard historical studies ;; 130; Harvard historical studies ;; v. 130.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 723
Subjects: Enlightenment -- France.; France -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.; France -- Politics and government -- 18th century.; France -- Civilization -- 17th century.; France -- History -- Louis XIV, 1643-1715.
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 675-704) and index.