The Business of Enlightenment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| - | ''[[Robert Darnton and the historiography of the Enlightenment]]'' | + | :''[[Robert Darnton and the historiography of the Enlightenment]]'' |
| - | More than any other, however it is [[Robert Darnton]] who most radically changed Enlightenment historiography. Consider, for example, the following citation from ''[[The Literary Underground of the Old Regime]]'' (1982): | + | '''''The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800''''' is a book by [[Robert Darnton]] on the ''[[publication history of L'Encyclopédie]]'' and examines the [[social conditions]] that brought about the production of the ''[[Encyclopédie]]''. |
| - | <blockquote> | + | Blurb: |
| - | “Perhaps the Enlightenment was a more [[down-to-earth]] affair than the rarefied climate of opinion described by textbook writers, and we should question the overly highbrow, overly metaphysical view of intellectual life in the eighteenth century.” | + | |
| - | </blockquote> | + | A great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Robert Darnton’s history of the Encyclopédie is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of histoire du livre, and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is concerned with the form of the thought of the great philosophes as it materialized into books and with the way books were made and distributed in the business of publishing. This is cultural history on a broad scale, a history of the process of civilization. |
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| + | In tracing the publishing story of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Darnton uses new sources—the papers of eighteenth-century publishers—that allow him to respond firmly to a set of problems long vexing historians. He shows how the material basis of literature and the technology of its production affected the substance and diffusion of ideas. He fully explores the workings of the literary market place, including the roles of publishers, book dealers, traveling salesmen, and other intermediaries in cultural communication. How publishing functioned as a business, and how it fit into the political as well as the economic systems of prerevolutionary Europe are set forth. The making of books touched on this vast range of activities because books were products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict. | ||
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| + | The ways ideas traveled in early modern Europe, the level of penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the society of the Old Regime, and the connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are brilliantly treated by Darnton. In doing so he unearths a double paradox. It was the upper orders in society rather than the industrial bourgeoisie or the lower classes that first shook off archaic beliefs and took up Enlightenment ideas. And the state, which initially had suppressed those ideas, ultimately came to favor them. Yet at this high point in the diffusion and legitimation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution erupted, destroying the social and political order in which the Enlightenment had flourished. | ||
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| + | Never again will the contours of the Enlightenment be drawn without reference to this work. Darnton has written an indispensable book for historians of modern Europe. | ||
| - | Indeed, in ''[[The Literary Underground of the Old Regime]]'' book, Darnton examines the [[underbelly]] of the [[French book industry]] in the eighteenth century, examining the world of book smuggling and the lives of those writers (the “Grub Street Hacks”) who never met the success of their ''[[philosophe]]'' cousins. In short, rather than concerning himself with Enlightenment canon, Darnton studies “what Frenchmen wanted to read”, and who wrote, published and distributed it. Similarly, in ''[[The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800]]'', Darnton states that there is no need to further study the encyclopedia itself, as “the book has been analyzed and anthologized dozen of times: to recapitulate all the studies of its intellectual content would be redundant”. He instead, as the title of the book suggests, examines the social conditions that brought about the production of the ''[[Encyclopédie]]''. This is representative of the social interpretation as a whole – an examination of the social conditions that brought about Enlightenment ideas rather than a study of the ideas themselves. | ||
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The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800 is a book by Robert Darnton on the publication history of L'Encyclopédie and examines the social conditions that brought about the production of the Encyclopédie.
Blurb:
A great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Robert Darnton’s history of the Encyclopédie is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of histoire du livre, and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is concerned with the form of the thought of the great philosophes as it materialized into books and with the way books were made and distributed in the business of publishing. This is cultural history on a broad scale, a history of the process of civilization.
In tracing the publishing story of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Darnton uses new sources—the papers of eighteenth-century publishers—that allow him to respond firmly to a set of problems long vexing historians. He shows how the material basis of literature and the technology of its production affected the substance and diffusion of ideas. He fully explores the workings of the literary market place, including the roles of publishers, book dealers, traveling salesmen, and other intermediaries in cultural communication. How publishing functioned as a business, and how it fit into the political as well as the economic systems of prerevolutionary Europe are set forth. The making of books touched on this vast range of activities because books were products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict.
The ways ideas traveled in early modern Europe, the level of penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the society of the Old Regime, and the connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are brilliantly treated by Darnton. In doing so he unearths a double paradox. It was the upper orders in society rather than the industrial bourgeoisie or the lower classes that first shook off archaic beliefs and took up Enlightenment ideas. And the state, which initially had suppressed those ideas, ultimately came to favor them. Yet at this high point in the diffusion and legitimation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution erupted, destroying the social and political order in which the Enlightenment had flourished.
Never again will the contours of the Enlightenment be drawn without reference to this work. Darnton has written an indispensable book for historians of modern Europe.
