The Attack on 'Feudalism' in Eighteenth-Century France

Hardback. Price clipped to D/J. If feudalism meant no more in the eighteenth century than a few quaint customs that could tickle an audience at the Comedie Francaise, why did French writers attack it so furiosuly? The author suggests that contemporary writers saw the remnants of the feudal regime as aimportant less in themselves, than as symbols of an attitude of mind which the 'enlighted' among them would no longer tolerate. Instead of representing the ideas of the eighteenth century through the eyes of a few outstanding writers, the author had tried to reconstitute the intellectual climate of the ancien regine from the workd of largely unknown historians, jurists, economists and others. In this way he illuminates the rich tecture of eighteenth century French thought, without which the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and even Rousseau lose much of their meaning. This study breathes life into the fierce controversies that shook the Age of Reason long before the outbreak of the Revolution. 215 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.).…