Examining the lives and works of three iconic personalities --Germaine de Stael, Stendhal, and Georges Cuvier--Kathleen Kete creates a groundbreaking cultural history of ambition in post-Revolutionary France. While in the old regime the traditionalist view of ambition prevailed--that is, ambition as morally wrong unless subsumed into a corporate whole--the new regime was marked by a rising tide of competitive individualism. Greater opportunities for personal advancement, however, were shadowed by lingering doubts about the moral value of ambition.
Kete identifies three strategies...
Examining the lives and works of three iconic personalities --Germaine de Stael, Stendhal, and Georges Cuvier--Kathleen Kete creates a groundbreaki...
