From Ancient Egypt to the Arab Spring, iconoclasm has occurred throughout history and across cultures. Both a vehicle for protest and a means of imagining change, it was rife during the tumultuous years of the French Revolution, and in this richly illustrated book Richard Clay examines how politically diverse groups used such attacks to play out their own complex power struggles. Drawing on extensive archival evidence to uncover a variety of iconoclastic acts – from the beheading or defacing of sculptures, to the smashing of busts, slashing of paintings and toppling of statues – Clay...

The profession of sculpture was transformed during the eighteenth century as the creation and appreciation of art became increasingly associated with social interaction. Central to this transformation was the esteemed yet controversial body, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. In this richly illustrated book, Tomas Macsotay focuses on the sculptor’s life at the Académie, analysing the protocols that dictated the production of academic art. Arguing that these procedures were modelled on the artist’s study journey to Rome, Macsotay discusses the close links between working...

Paris 1744: a royal official approaches a shopkeeper’s wife, proposing that she become an informant to the Crown and report on the conversations of foreign diplomats who take meals at her house. Her reports, housed today in the Bastille archives, are little more than a collection of wartime rumors gathered from clandestine, handwritten newspapers and everyday talk around the city, yet she comes to imagine herself a political agent on behalf of Louis XV. In this book Tabetha Ewing analyses different forms of everyday talk over the course of the War of Austrian Succession to explore how they...

Au XXIe siècle, l’Europe ne fait plus rêver: son modèle est contesté, tant sur le plan économique qu’intellectuel et politique. Face à ces désillusions, il est urgent d’interroger les origines de l’idée d’Europe: quand et comment la notion d’Europe s’est-elle définie? L’ouvrage dirigé par Antoine Lilti et Céline Spector propose un détour par les Lumières. Si l’Europe peut s’enorgueillir d’une longue histoire, c’est bien au XVIIIe siècle qu’elle est devenue un enjeu philosophique, historique et politique majeur. De Montesquieu à Kant, de Voltaire à...

Après avoir donné prise à des considérations équivoques, l’idée du progrès gagne son entière légitimité au XIXe siècle. Comment s’est faite la transition? A en chercher les facteurs sous l’Ancien Régime, on se rend compte que les écrits sur la modernité scientifique sont rarement mis en évidence et la structure même de leur contenu peu étudiée. Sous la direction de Frédéric Charbonneau, des historiens de la littérature, de la philosophie et de la médecine analysent la construction d’un discours du progrès. A l’époque des Lumières, il s’est constitué dans...

In 1752 Charles-Joseph Natoire, then a highly successful painter, assumed the directorship of the prestigious Académie de France in Rome. Twenty-three years later he was removed from office, criticised as being singularly inept. What was the basis for this condemnation that has been perpetuated by historians ever since? Reed Benhamou’s re-evaluation of Natoire’s life and work at the Académie is the first to weigh the prevailing opinion against the historical record. The accusations made against Charles-Joseph Natoire were many and varied: that his artistic work was increasingly...

What did Europe owe Spain in the eighteenth century? This infamous question, posed by Nicolas Masson de Morvilliers in the Encyclopédie méthodique, caused an international uproar at the height of the Enlightenment. His polemical article ‘Espagne’, with its tabloid-like prose, resonated with a French-reading public that blamed the Spanish Empire for France’s eroding economy. Spain was outraged, and responded by publishing its own translation-rebuttal, the article ‘España’ penned by Julián de Velasco for the Spanish Encyclopedia metódica. In this volume, the original French and...

The place of religion in the Enlightenment has been keenly debated for many years. Research has tended, however, to examine the interplay of religion and knowledge in Western countries, often ignoring the East. In Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox World leading historians address this imbalance by exploring the intellectual and cultural challenges and changes that took place in Orthodox communities during the eighteenth century. The two main centres of Orthodoxy, the Greek-speaking world and the Russian Empire, are the focus of early chapters, with specialists analysing the...

Dans les années 1760, l’atelier du baron d’Holbach est, avec Ferney au temps de Voltaire, le principal lieu de diffusion des idées hétérodoxes qui permettent la radicalisation des Lumières en France. L’activité de traduction d’Holbach, plus importante en quantité que son activité d’auteur, est étudiée ici pour la première fois de manière systématique. En comparant les ouvrages clandestins traduits et publiés par Holbach avec leurs vrais ou prétendus originaux (majoritairement anglais), Mladen Kozul analyse les manipulations énonciatives, thématiques et éditoriales...

The stereotype of Casanova as a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover has been so pervasive that generations of historians have failed to take serious account of his philosophical legacy. This has recently changed, however, as the publication of the definitive edition of his memoirs and the majority of his longer treatises has heralded a surge of interest in the writer. This book constitutes an interpretive turn in Casanova studies in which the author is positioned as a highly perceptive and engaged observer of the Enlightenment. Drawing primarily on Casanova’s large body of manuscripts and...