Public academic prize contests—the concours académique—played a
significant role in the intellectual life of Enlightenment France,
with aspirants formulating positions on such matters as slavery,
poverty, the education of women, tax reform, and urban renewal and
submitting the resulting essays for scrutiny by panels of judges. In
_The Enlightenment in Practice_, Jeremy L. Caradonna draws on archives
both in Paris and the provinces to show that thousands of
individuals—ranging from elite men and women of letters artisans,
and peasants—participated in these intellectual competitions, a far
broader range of people than has been previously assumed.
Caradonna contends that the Enlightenment in France can no longer be
seen as a cultural movement restricted to a small coterie of
philosophers or a limited number of printed texts. Moreover, Caradonna
demonstrates that the French monarchy took academic competitions quite
seriously, sponsoring numerous contests on such practical matters as
deforestation, the quality of drinking water, and the nighttime
illumination of cities. In some cases, the contests served as an early
mechanism for technology transfer: the state used submissions to
identify technical experts to whom it could turn for advice. Finally,
the author shows how this unique intellectual exercise declined during
the upheavals of the French Revolution, when voicing moderate public
criticism became a rather dangerous act.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780801464379
Publisert
2017
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Cornell University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter