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  1. Home
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  3. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
  • Cited by 119
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511819421
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819421
Subjects:
Area Studies, European History after 1450, History, European Studies
Series:
New Approaches to European History (23)
Information

Book description

James Melton's lucid and accessible 2001 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 was 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 the New Approaches in European History series will be of great interest to students of social and political history, literary studies, political theory, and the history of women.

Reviews

‘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.’

Source: JES

‘ … among the most readable books on Europe’s ancien régime to have been published in recent times. Melton is notably thoughtful and deeply considered.’

Source: 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 …’.

Source: Europa

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