The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (New Approaches to European History, Series Number 23) - Softcover

Melton, James Van Horn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521469694 ISBN 13: 9780521469692

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Synopsis

James Melton's accessible study examines the rise of "the public" in eighteenth-century Europe. Focusing on England, France, and the German-speaking territories, this is the first critical reassessment of what the philosopher JÜrgen Habermas called the "bourgeois public sphere" of the eighteenth century. Topics include the growing importance of public opinion in political life, transformations of the literary public realm, eighteenth-century authorship, theater publics, and new practices of sociability as they developed in salons, coffeehouses, taverns and Masonic lodges.

About this title

Book Description

James Melton's lucid and accessible study examines the rise of 'the public' in eighteenth-century Europe. A work of comparative synthesis focusing on England, France, and the German-speaking territories, this is the first book-length, critical reassessment of what the philosopher JÜrgen Habermas called the 'bourgeois public sphere' of the eighteenth century. Topics include the growing importance of public opinion in political life, transformations of the literary public realm, eighteenth-century authorship, theatre publics, and new practices of sociability as they developed in salons, coffeehouses, taverns and Masonic lodges.

About the Author

James Van Horn Melton is Professor of History at Emory University, where he has served as Chair of both the Department of History and the Department of German Studies. His book The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001) has appeared in Turkish and Spanish translation, and his book Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge University Press, 1988) won the 1990 Biennial Book Prize awarded by the Central European History Society. Melton has held fellowships from the NEH, the SSRC, the Fulbright Program, the Max-Planck-Institut fur Geschichte in Gottingen, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2012 13 he served as President of the Central European History Society.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521469694
• ISBN 13: 9780521469692
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300