The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe

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 Habermas termed the 'bourgeois public sphere'. During the Enlightenment the Public assumed a new significance as governments came to recognise the power of public opinion in political life; the expansion of print culture created new reading publics and transformed how and what people read; authors and authorship acquired new status, while the growth of commercialized theatres transferred monopoly over the stage from the court to the audience; salons, coffeehouses, taverns and Masonic lodges fostered new practices of sociability. Spanning a variety of disciplines, this important addition to New Approaches in European History will be of great interest to students of social and political history, literary studies, political theory, and the history of women.

'Melton's useful new book traces the explosion of public institutions in eighteenth-century England, France and the Germanies ... a rousing and touchingly old-fashioned defence of formal representative institutions.' JES ' ... among the most readable books on Europe's ancien regime to have been published in recent times. Melton is notably thoughtful and deeply considered.' The International History Review 'The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe is a well-written and coherent synthesis of Habermas' argument in the French, English and German contexts and is grounded in an impressive body of international, mainly Anglo-Saxon scholarship ... it will certainly be of vital interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students ...'. Europa