Age of Enlightenment  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 21:47, 24 May 2009

Thérèse Philosophe (1748) was the bestseller of the French Enlightenment

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18th century literature, 18th century philosophy, Counter-Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was an 18th century counterculture which opposed religious superstition and advocated rational thinking. It culminated in the American and French revolutions, as well as the Industrial Revolution.

The motto of enlightenment was expressed by Immanuel Kant in "Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!". While seventeenth century philosophy saw the detachment of philosophy from theology, although it still offered arguments for the existence of – a deity, 18th-century philosophy was to go still further, leaving theology and religion behind altogether.)

"Media, as we know it, first emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Papers, journals, broadsheets, all became widely available in the new created public space of the coffeehouse. [...] The popular market for art and literature liberated writers and artists from the need for court patronage. No longer having to please their sponsors, they could experiment, and speak out as brashly as they wished." --Ken Goffman via Counterculture Through the Ages, p. 162

The Enlightenment was followed by Romanticism, which was a reaction against the rationalization of nature by the Enlightenment.

Contemporary art movements

baroque - rococo - neoclassicism

Key people

Denis Diderot - Immanuel Kant - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Marquis de Sade - Spinoza - Voltaire

Related:

anti-clericalism - capitalism (rise of) - clandestine and anonymous publishing - libertine - materialism - radical politics - reason (main trope) - French Revolution - Industrial Revolution (rise of) - print culture (result of)

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counter-enlightenment

Historians and texts

• Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) - Horkheimer and Adorno -
• Robert Darnton
• John Mullan
• Peter Gay

Encyclopédie

The French Encyclopédie was a quintessential summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. It tried to destroy superstitions and provide access to human knowledge. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, however. This was mostly due to its religious tolerance (though this should not be exaggerated; the article on "Atheism" defended the state's right to persecute and to execute atheists). The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma. The entire work was banned; but because it had many highly placed supporters, work continued and each volume was delivered clandestinely to subscribers.

Libertine freethinkers

During the Enlightenment, many of the French free-thinkers began to exploit pornography as a medium of social criticism and satire. Libertine pornography such as Thérèse Philosophe (1748) was a subversive social commentary and often targeted the Catholic Church and general attitudes of sexual repression. The market for the mass-produced, inexpensive pamphlets soon came to the bourgeoisie, making the upper class worry, as in England, that the morals of the lower class and weak-minded would be corrupted since women, slaves and the uneducated were seen as especially vulnerable during that time. The stories and illustrations (sold in the galleries of the Palais Royal, along with services of prostitutes) were often anti-clerical and full of misbehaving priests, monks and nuns, a tradition that in French pornography continued into the 20th century. In the period leading up to the French Revolution, pornography was also used as political commentary; Marie Antoinette was often targeted with fantasies involving orgies, lesbian activities and the paternity of her children, and rumors circulated about the supposed sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI.